Bermuda Drugs Council are slowly winning the war to remove drug taking from Bermuda?s national sports teams, according to Vaughan Mosher, Managing Director of Benedict Associates and a key player in the formation of the council.

Quoting figures collated by his company, Mosher said that the number of those who have tested positive for drug abuse has dropped below one percent for the last three years in succession.

?When we first started out in 1997, of all the national level individuals and teams we screened, over nine percent were not drug free,? he said.

?For the last three years we have got it down to under one percent and in the last year it has only been one half of one percent. You cannot do better than that. It is a terrific achievement and we very much hope to keep up the momentum.?

The importance placed on drugs testing in sport has intensified in recent years and came to prominence on the Island after the embarrassing ?Miami Seven? debacle of 1997, when seven of the Bermuda national football squad were stopped at Miami airport for allegedly having drugs on their person when returning from the Pan-Am Games in Jamaica.

Although the issue had already gained significant global notoriety since Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was found to have been using anabolic steroids at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, it was not until the Miami incident that the Bermuda Government decided to take a tougher stance.

?1997 was the genesis of stricter drugs testing in Bermuda,? Mosher said.

?The Bermuda Football Association, in particular, had been saying for some time that they needed help with this. The pressing nature of the issue only really became apparent in 1997 and it was at that point that the Sports Ministry asked me to facilitate an overarching drugs testing body, independent of local sports associations but incorporating representatives from all sports.?

This was how the Bermuda Council for Drugs Free Sport was born and it was left to several individuals, including Mosher, to formulate policy and standard operating procedures for testing in Bermuda.

Mosher was quick to defend what some view as flaws and inconsistencies in the drugs testing policy in Bermuda whereby authorities test principally for ?recreational? rather than performance enhancing stimulants.

Some point out that in many cases an individual who does not smoke marijuana or take cocaine but takes steroids or engages in blood doping, is more likely to get away with drug abuse in Bermuda. Surely, some argue, it should be the other way round.

Mosher rejects this, however, pointing out that they do happily send over 100 samples abroad for further testing every year in sports which are considered ?vulnerable? by their respective international sporting bodies such as weightlifting, body building and track and field. He asked critics to remember that there were only 12 testing laboratories in the world for performance enhancing drugs and it would therefore be ?unrealistic? to expect a nation of this size to possess one.

He also took issue with people who refer to marijuana and cocaine as ?recreational? or ?social? drugs.

? I think the notion of ?recreational? drugs is a misnomer,? he said.

?The terminology itself is misleading. To refer to it as a social drug makes it sound very convivial and acceptable.? Recreational? is even more inappropriate because we refer to playing sports as recreation and it gives the impression that one can take drugs as if they were a sport. These sorts of terms are highly misleading and probably well marketed.?

?In fact, they are all illegal,? he continued and I would like to think that the work we do here is not to detect what some call recreational drugs but illegal banned substances which have no place in sport.?

?It is very expensive to screen for performance enhancing drugs,? he continued.

?I should also point out that in the last few years many of what I would describe as illicit drugs have been placed on the banned list in many sports. Even marijuana is considered a performance enhancing drug in sports like archery and darts where there is precision required.?

?There are other practices such as the taking of steroids and blood doping which we do not test for locally,? he admitted.

?This is unless, of course, there is a governing sporting body which requests or requires it, in which case we do provide screenings for performance enhancing drugs by sending away the samples to a laboratory in Montreal, with which we have had a relationship for several years.?

This, he said, would also incorporate testing for the new, previously undetectable steroid tetrahyrogestine (THG), the discovery of which is currently taking the global sporting community by storm and has landed many, including top British sprinter Dwain Chambers, in seriously hot water.

Mosher also was keen to highlight the improvement in drug testing technologies that have been made possible locally.

?We started out testing for only three different drug families, those being the opiate family, the marijuana family and cocaine,? he said.

?In the last couple of years we have acquired the technology to test for two more, amphetamines and ecstasy. This means we are now able to detect between 25 and 30 illegal drugs which is pretty wide ranging.?

Mosher revealed how it was now possible to detect when people have used artificial products with which to wash the evidence of drug-taking out of their system ? a common ploy used to counteract testing.

In the meantime, Mosher says he has every confidence in the systems in place and remains determined to ensure that those who abuse drugs in Bermuda are prevented from competing at an international level.