Doping-Dark web poses risk for athletes looking for drugs

The dark web is a bazaar for performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) but is not a market place currently frequented by elite athletes, concluded the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on Friday following a nearly year-long investigation.

Having monitored the sales activity of target dark web platforms during a 10-month period WADA's Intelligence and Investigations department found purchasing drugs there presented significant risk.

These risks were heightened for elite or professional athletes, with many products inaccurately labelled containing concentrations less or more than advertised.

The Project Team did identify a group of dark web suppliers who specifically referenced elite athletes as clientele and a supposed ability to evade anti-doping detection.

Alarmingly, one substance obtained from an underground lab claimed to be new and capable of evading detection.

WADA is currently testing the substance trying to establish if it does qualify as a banned performance-enchancing substance.

"I am relieved it does not have the attraction that we were assuming at the beginning," Gunter Younger, WADA's Intelligence and Investigations director told Reuters.

"There were these rumours that elite athletes used the dark web to purchase PEDs, so we thought let's go into the dark web, pretend to be an athlete and find out whether it is easy to get the substances.

"We came to the conclusion that it would be a tremendous risk for elite athletes who need to know exactly what they are putting in their body."

Investigators found that the vast majority of those wading into the murky waters of the dark web in search of PEDs were mostly body builders and amateur athletes with the bulk of products coming from illicit pharmaceutical laboratories and