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The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), French: Agence mondiale antidopage, is an independent foundation created through a collective initiative led by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). It was set up on November 10, 1999 in Lausanne, Switzerland to coordinate the fight against drugs in sport. Its current chairman is Richard Pound, a former IOC vice-president and outspoken opponent of drugs in sport. In 2001, WADA voted to move its headquarters to Montreal, Canada.

Initially funded by the International Olympic Committee, WADA now receives only half of its budgetary requirements from them, with the other half coming from various governments throughout the world. The agency works to help individual sporting federations implement testing procedures in the fields of education and research. It also produces a list of prohibited substances that athletes are not allowed to take.^[1][2]

In 2004, the World Anti-Doping Code was implemented by sports organizations prior to the Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, standardizing the rules and regulations governing anti-doping across all sports and all countries for the first time. The World Anti-Doping Code does not have the status of public international law.

The Anti-Doping Convention of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg was opened for signature on 16 December 1989 as the first multilateral legal standard in this field. It has been signed by 48 states including the Council of Europe non-member states Australia, Belarus, Canada and Tunisia. The Convention is open for signature by other non-European states. It does not claim to create a universal model of anti-doping, but sets a certain number of common standards and regulations requiring Parties to adopt legislative, financial, technical, educational and other measures. In this sense the Convention strives for the same general aims as WADA, without being directly linked to it.

The main objective of the Convention is to promote the national and international harmonisation of the measures to be taken against doping. In their constitutional provisions, each contracting party undertakes to:

• create a national co-ordinating body;
• reduce the trafficking of doping substances and the use of banned doping agents;
• reinforce doping controls and improve detection techniques;
• support education and awareness-raising programmes;
• guarantee the efficiency of sanctions taken against offenders;
• collaborate with sports organisations at all levels, including at international level;
• and to use accredited anti-doping laboratories.

Furthermore the Convention describes the mission of the Monitoring Group set up in order to monitor its implementation and periodically re-examine the List of prohibited substances and methods which can be found in annex to the main text.

An Additional Protocol to the Convention entered into force on 1 April 2004 with the aim of ensuring the mutual recognition of anti-doping controls and of reinforcing the implementation of the Convention using a binding control system.

WADA has received criticism from the National Football League Players Association executive director Gene Upshaw. When asked if the NFL will use WADA tests on NFL players, he stated "I have no confidence in WADA or their kits. I have my doubts about WADA and their history. I am not willing to accept them as an authority on this."^[3] The NFL currently only uses urine tests, which does not detect HGH. The WADA test detects HGH but reportedly only 23-36 hours after it is injected into the athlete.

In spite of a growing awareness of, and catering for the condition paruresis by a number of other drug testing agencies, some of which deal with convicted prisoners and those on probation, the WADA urine sampling rules do not at present cater to sufferers of this condition

• World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Official Website

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