SINGAPORE — The Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) said in Parliament today (Aug 18) that Singapore’s anti-doping practices for national athletes are in line with the latest version of the World Anti-Doping Code, and while there are new testing requirements under the 2015 Code that they are putting into place, there is no need for further legislation as these can be introduced under current laws.

Responding a question by Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) Benedict Tan, MCCY Minister Lawrence Wong said: “To fulfil our obligations under the UNESCO International Convention against Doping in Sport, we established Anti-Doping Singapore (ADS) in 2010 as the national anti-doping organisation to oversee sports anti-doping policies and operations.”

“ADS works closely with the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) and the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) to ensure cooperation on information sharing and anti-doping related matters.”

But Tan, who is also President of the Singapore Sailing Federation, and Chief of Sports Medicine at the Changi General Hospital, added that he feels there is “an urgent need to continue to police and monitor doping” within the body-building fraternity, which saw seven bodybuilders testing positive for banned substances at the 2012 National Bodybuilding Championships.

“Since that incident, body-building has been dropped from SNOC (Singapore National Olympic Council), meaning that body-building no longer falls under the ADS jurisdiction,” said Tan in Parliament. “Even though they have fallen out of ADS jurisdiction, I feel that there is an urgent need to continue to police and monitor doping within the body-building fraternity.”

He noted that apart from body-building, recreational sports do not fall under the ADS either, and asked if the Minister could elaborate on how Singapore can be more pro-active in preventing doping among recreational gym users and non-competitive athletes who do not fall under the ADS purview.

Wong said today that public awareness and education needs to be stepped up, with ADS and Sport Singapore to look into this area.

“On the recreational users or recreational athletes… and perhaps those who may be tempted to use performance-enhancing drugs… I think we will have to look at how we can raise public awareness, particularly amongst this group,” he said. “I am not sure if we want to go into start policing or administering anti-doping tests at all the private gyms around Singapore. That may be a bit of an intrusive measure, because in the end, there needs to be personal responsibility in terms of people’s actions and whether or not they are aware of the consequences of taking some of these types of performance-enhancing drugs.

“So certainly, public awareness efforts and public education can be stepped up. And Sport Singapore, together with the ADS would look at how it can do more of these public awareness efforts.”