Athletes who are found to have used such banned substances, whether through a positive drugs test, the biological passport system, an investigation or public admission, may receive a competition ban for a length of time which reflects the severity of the infraction.
The sports body responsible for determining which substances are banned in athletics is the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
Many high-profile sportspeople to receive doping bans have come from the sport of athletics, with significant past cases concerning Ben Johnson, Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery.
Furthermore, a number of athletes who underwent state-sponsored doping programmes in East Germany and the Soviet Union between the 1950s and 1980s were competitors in athletics, but the quality of the international anti-doping work was so poor that only one East German athlete ever tested positive.
[1] Following allegations of state-sponsored doping in Russia, the IAAF suspended the country's athletes from competition, including the 2016 Summer Olympics.