Clarify JADCO's power

As we indicated last week, the Court of Arbitration for Sport's decision to overturn sanctions against Veronica Campbell-Brown places pressure on the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission (JADCO) to urgently upgrade its operating systems and procedures.

But we believe there is a wider job to be done by JADCO, include getting, and declaring, the scope of its authority for adjudicating alleged doping infractions by Jamaican athletes.

Before this ruling, JADCO had international critics for the presumed insufficiency of its out-of-competition testing of Jamaican athletes. With regard to Mrs Campbell-Brown, her two-year ban by the IAAF (imposed after a Jamaican tribunal gave her only a warning) was overturned on the basis of technical failures by JADCO in the management of her test and handling of her urine sample.

JADCO acted only as an agent for the IAAF at the meet where Mrs Campbell-Brown was tested. Nor was it a JADCO tribunal that conducted her initial hearing. Ostensibly, the IAAF had jurisdiction, but delegated its authority to its Jamaican affiliate.

The need for clarification of jurisdictional powers arises in the face of the JADCO legislation, which lists the categories of sportspersons who fall under its umbrella and declares among its objects at Section 3 (c) "the application of fair procedures for, and means to oversee, doping control, determination of anti-doping rules violations and their consequences, and other decisions made in the interest of drug-free sports".

The question is whether in Jamaica, JADCO, under the law, shares that power with any other agency.

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