Ross Coomber
PROFESSOR IN CRIMINOLOGY
University of Liverpool, United Kingdom
anabolic-androgenic steroids, performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs), illicit drug use and supply, drugs policy, harm reduction
Ross Coomber, Ph.D., is Professor of Criminology and Sociology at the University of Liverpool. Until recently he was Professor and Director of the Griffith Criminology Institute, Griffith University, Australia. He has been involved in researching a wide range of issues relating to drug use, drug supply and formal and informal interventions in many societies around the world for over twenty-five years. He has published extensively within the drug field and is the author of Pusher Myths: Re-Situating the Drug Dealer (2006) and co-editor (with Nigel South) of Drug Use and Cultural Contexts ‘Beyond the West’ (2004) (both Free Association Books) among others. His latest book is Key Concepts in Crime and Society (2015) published by Sage (co-authored with Joe Donnermyer, Karen McElrath and John Scott). Ross has been publishing on the issue of image and performance enhancing substances (IPEDs), on and off, for many years. He was an early (1992) advocate of harm reduction approaches to performance enhancing drug (PED) use in professional sport, and in broader policy terms, that there are many myths and contradictions about fairness in the sporting world (1998) that confound simple doping policy. More recently (2013a) he has tried to show how much of what happens in ant-doping policy in the sporting world has its roots in, and mirrors, responses to illicit drugs in the non-sporting world. His latest research (2015) relates much supply of IPEDs at the local non-professional and semi-professional levels to be closer to friend/social supply than dealing proper and should be treated as such by the criminal justice system. He also strongly believes that the use of recreational drugs should not be the remit of sporting authorities or bodies such as WADA (2013b).