AEPSAD loses powers and changes its name in the new text, which comes into force this Thursday
Terreros: “This Law makes Spanish regulations more fair, proportionate, independent and sensitive to new realities”
MADRID, 29 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The new Anti-Doping Law that comes into force this Thursday to adapt Spanish legislation to the World Code of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) reduces sanctions if it is shown that the substances are ‘contaminated’, imposes the most serious ones on those who dope drugs. minors and states that the procedures will be resolved by the Anti-Doping Sanctioning Committee.
The text, approved with the favorable vote of all the parliamentary groups both in the Congress of Deputies and in the Senate, is the first law in the fight against doping in Spain that obtains the unanimous endorsement of all the political parties in its processing in Las Cortes.
After the organic laws of 2008 and 2013, the latter modified in 2017, it is the first time that an anti-doping rule in Spain is approved the same year as the entry into force of the latest version of the WADA World Anti-Doping Code. .
For the director of the Spanish Agency for the Protection of Health in Sports (AEPSAD), whose name changes to ‘Spanish Commission for the Fight Against Doping in Sports’, José Luis Terreros, this new Law “makes the Spanish regulations more fair, proportionate, independent and sensitive to new realities in the fight against doping in sport “.
“All of us who have worked in its preparation have listened and attended to the demands and amendments of all the organizations and entities affected and the amendments of the parliamentary groups. All with the ultimate objective of continuing to place Spain at the forefront of the world anti-doping fight. “, he manifested.
For Terreros, the new Spanish anti-doping law was “necessary” and completes the sport model linked to rights and values ”and values sport as a right and a practice linked to health and fair play.”
WHAT’S NEW: CLASSIFICATION AND NEW TYPES OF INFRINGEMENT
The main novelties of the new Spanish Anti-Doping Law are a classification of athletes in three levels of practice: International, National and Amateur, to which different sanctioning regimes will correspond; and the figure of ‘Protected Persons’ is incorporated, which are minors and persons lacking legal capacity or to act.
These protected persons have an adapted sanctioning regime, but those who administer doping substances to them or implicate them in their trafficking, or who try to do so, are subject to the most serious sanctions. Likewise, these protected persons may be exempted from the publication of their sanctions.
Likewise, new types of offenses are included that protect those who collaborate in the repression of doping, such as intimidation and dissuasion of witnesses and retaliation against informants, and the ‘Substances of Abuse’ are defined, those that society consumes in excess. in contexts other than sports.
NEW SANCTIONING BODY
The procedures will be resolved by a new body, the Anti-Doping Sanction Committee, integrated by professionals linked to law, science and medicine, as regulated by the new International Standard for Results Management.
AEPSAD loses powers in the field of Sports and Health, and this also leads to the change of the body’s name, which is now known as the State Agency, the Spanish Commission for the Fight Against Doping in Sports.
Likewise, the normative text further clarifies the condition of the athlete’s ‘Biological Passport’ as a valid and applicable test method in Spain for the fight against doping.