Here’s the ITF’s 2018 Prohibited List

The International Tennis Federation has released the list of prohibited substances for 2018.

The changes go into effect as of Jan. 1, 2018

Says the ITF:

“All players are responsible for acquainting themselves, and ensuring that each Person from whom they take advice (including medical personnel) is acquainted, with all of the requirements of the Programme, including knowing what constitutes an Anti-Doping Rule Violation under the Programme and what substances and methods are prohibited, and ensuring that anything they ingest or use, as well as any medical treatment they receive, does not give rise to an Anti-Doping Rule Violation.”

Click here to see the full list.

More crucial of course, is the document that lists the changes from the 2017 list to next year’s list.

That’s here.

Here are a few highlights.

Alcohol no longer prohibited

“After careful consideration and extensive consultation, Alcohol was excluded from the Prohibited List. The intent of this change is not to compromise the integrity or safety of any sport where alcohol use is a concern, but rather to endorse a different means of enforcing bans on alcohol use in these sports. The four International Federations (IF) affected by this change have been alerted sufficiently in advance in order to amend their rules and to put in place protocols to test for alcohol use and appropriately sanction athletes who do not abide by the rules of their sport,” the ITF writes.

“Control of the process will allow IF more flexibility in applying rules or thresholds as they see fit. The National Anti-Doping Organizations are no longer obliged to conduct tests but may assist IF and National Federations where appropriate.”

Monitored List changes

Two substances that had been on the list of monitored substances (as meldonium was in 2016) have been removed “because the required information on prevalence was obtained.

Those are Mitragynine and telmisartan (brand name Micardis, typically used to treat high blood pressure).

Two more were added, “to evaluate misuse in sport: 2-ethylsulfanyl-1H-benzimidazole (bemitil) in- and out-of-competition and Hydrocodone in-competition.

Bemitil (also known as Metaprot and AntiHot) appears to be another of those substances that got on the watch list because of its extensive use by Russian and East European athletes. It was first developed in the 1970s.

According to this site, its main purpose is “increasing the physical and mental performance in people exposed to stressful conditions, and accelerating the recovery process after physical exertion. That makes it useful for athletes, especially for bodybuilders and runners. What is important is that Bemitil can be taken by healthy individuals.”

It’s available at the “Dr. Doping” site, among many other sites, which probably doesn’t help its case.

As for hydrocodone, an addictive pain killer, it is a nearly exclusively American product. The statistics a few years ago were that Americans consume 99 per cent of the hydrocodone produced. It’s the opioid contained in Vicodin.

For now, that doesn’t mean either of these substances are banned. They are just being monitored.

Removal of Glycerol

In consideration of the information published in scientific articles since 2012 that particularly addresses the ability of glycerol to influence the athlete‘s plasma volume and parameters of the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP), the magnitude of glycerol-derived effects is regarded as minimal. Therefore, glycerol has been removed from the Prohibited List.

Changes on the cannabis side

The category Cannabimimetics, e.g. “Spice, JWH-018, JWH-073, HU210” was changed to “synthetic cannabinoids, e.g. Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and other cannabimimetics”. The synthetic cannabinoids are one of the main classes of novel psychoactive substances that have constantly emerging new drugs and changing availability. The previous list of examples continues to be prohibited, but are currently used less commonly. “Other cannabimimetics” replaced these examples.

• Cannabidiol is no longer prohibited. Synthetic cannabidiol is not a cannabimimetic; however, cannabidiol extracted from cannabis plants may also contain varying concentrations of THC, which remains a prohibited substance.