Underground challenges

The crackdown was intensified less than six weeks from the Games as officials worried they may have missed something, having focused on hospitals, retailers and chemical plants.

"Online and underground channels of illegal dope selling will be our next focus," said Wang Yongli, deputy head of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau's economic crime department.

He said police will look for clues from websites and posts on the Internet but didn't disclose what the underground channels were for fear of compromising investigations.

The main channels of selling doping agents may not be hospitals or medicine retailers but other "deep ones", which officials need to make more efforts to tackle, said Dai Jianping, deputy head of Games Service Department at the BOCOG, who is in charge of anti-doping, medicine and public health.

"Athletes' unintentional misuse of doping drugs should be handled but it's not the biggest source of doping problems, ... there's a market for illegal doping drugs in China," said Dai.

The SFDA's deputy chief Wu Zhen told the press last month that apart from athletes, some young people are taking doping agents to build muscles or just as recreational drugs.

"While drug abuse by young people is relatively common in some other countries, China has also seen similar signs," Wu said, noting the country's anti-doping drive was not only aimed at a clean Olympics but also protecting public health.

"Cracking down on the online and underground channels is not a crash program for the Olympics," said Wang. "It's a long-term task."

Beijing had shut down nearly 50 websites suspected of illegal drug selling since last year, said Deputy Director Cong Luoluo of the Beijing Drug Administration.

Giving an example, he said the administration had probed into a website suspected of selling human growth hormones and found its IP address was based in the State of Arizona, the United States.

"It's difficult and time consuming to handle such cross-national cases," said Wang.

Athletes alert

While the environment of selling doping drugs has been cleared up, athletes should bear the responsibility of resisting temptations and being careful of banned substances when choosing what drugs to take themselves, said Wang Zhexiong.

China announced on Friday a life-ban for its top swimmer Ouyang Kunpeng who had tested positive for steroids, which officials said was a demonstration of the country's determination to hold clean Olympics.

"We'll continue to strengthen the education of our athletes and punish doping offences strictly," said Sun Guohua, director assistant of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Sport.

Meanwhile, clearer signals were urged for the post-Olympics management of the doping agent market.

"The anti-doping drive should not relent after the Games," said Cong, who told Xinhua some enterprises are playing edge balls betting on relaxed regulation after the Olympic period.

"Are we aggressive for now or forever? " he said. "We hope there will be clear policies."

(Xinhua News Agency July 2, 2008)