Higenamine, Anti-Doping, and Plant-Based Cuisine: A Legal Analysis of Higenamine in Sport Anti-Doping Systems

Current anti-doping policy seeks to protect honest athletes from biochemically overeducated colleagues. However, there is a question of whether the present policy has gone too far. This article illustrates the ambiguity of the anti-doping policy in the context of a particular plant-based substance (i.e., higenamine) by providing certain case studies. In such cases, the process of proof requires the continuous checking of suppositions since an athlete must establish how the prohibited substance could have entered his or her body. This obligation implies that an athlete and the defending team must have legal, medical, dietary, and biochemical knowledge. However, even with all precautions, it is still possible to fail an anti-doping test and be severely punished because it is almost impossible to trace all the sources that caused the prohibited substance to enter the athlete’s body.