The current anti-doping policies of state athletic commissions has been criticized for not coping up with the latest technology and methods to catch cheating athletes. Athletes especially in combat sports like boxing and mixed martial arts are required to undergo urine testing to know whether they are taking any banned substances. However, urine testing for steroids and other PED’s is not enough since there are other substances which cannot be detected in urine samples. Human growth hormone or HGH is one of those drugs that can only be traced with the use of blood testing.

The call for a tougher policy on doping was started by Floyd Mayweather Jr. when he asks his opponents to undergo an Olympic style blood testing. His fight with Manny Pacquiao was stalled due to unresolved terms related to the blood testing but Shane Mosley agreed. Some UFC players also urge other players to take an Olympic style blood testing to disprove allegation of steroid use.

Experts suggest that athletic commissions such as NSAC, where most combat sports were held, should adopt both urine and blood testing. This is to ensure that all types of designer steroids will be traced and it will serve as a deterrent to cheating athletes. In the monthly meeting of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, anti-doping experts were invited to share their insights and suggestions on how to prevent athletes from using performance enhancing drugs to gain competitive advantage. According to MMAJunkie, some of the prominent people invited in the meeting were Travis Tygart, the chief of USADA and Robert Voy, the former chief medical officer for the United States Olympic Committee.

Both panelists suggested that tougher policies and new methods of testing should be adopted to be more effective in cleaning the sports of performance enhancers. “If you want to have an effective program, you at least have to have the right to do both (referring to urine and blood testing),” Tygart said. “Everybody with a heartbeat now knows [human growth hormone] is only detected in blood. It will be a free-for-all, if it’s not already, for human growth hormone use if you don’t have the right to at least collect blood,” he added. The chief of USADA believes that tougher programs will serve as a deterrent but failure to implement this will send a laud message to athletes to cheat since they know that they will not be caught.

Robert Voy told NSAC officials to be proactive in dealing with performance enhancing drugs. “This business of testing for performance-enhancing drugs is going to be in the future a never-ending situation. There are people that insist upon – either through science or in some way – finding an advantage in a sport, particularly in a professional sport where the awards are financial. We’ll always have to have an open-ended list of performance-enhancing drugs and always be looking for the new substances,” Voy said.

The anti-doping experts also expressed their concerns on designer steroids which are sometimes undetected by existing testing methods. Athletes will be tempted to use drugs such as HGH and Erythropoietin (EPO) or other methods such as gene doping and blood transfusions. “You can’t specifically list every drug that would fall in the category of anabolic steroids. That’s the designer steroid issue. Secondly, the commission doesn’t prohibit methods that aren’t drugs,” said Tygart.

Voy also said that using an anabolic steroid or a performance-enhancing drug that increases unfairly the individual’s opportunity to gain endurance, muscular strength, etc., is a risk to the health of the participants in the sport. He also likened the use of anabolic steroids to a criminal act.

Tygart on the other hand, urges the NSAC to adopt a similar policy with USADA. Aside from adopting both urine and blood testing, 24-hour notice to athletes should be remove and instead implement a random anytime testing. Funding should not be a problem for the commission because they can re-allocate resources and generate funds from big events such as pay-per-view and other fund generating projects.

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