Austria's parliament passed a toughened anti-doping law, the latest in a series of steps to crack down on banned substances in sports.
The law makes it a crime to dope someone else and to circulate and store banned substances above the legal limit.
Among other things, it gives the country's new anti-doping agency the right to publish the names of athletes banned from their sport due to doping proceedings. Manipulating blood or genetic material is also illegal under the measure passed late Tuesday.
Those involved in the doping of minors could face up to five years in prison under the law, which symbolically takes effect next month before the start of the Beijing Olympics.
Earlier this month, Austria launched the National Anti-Doping Agency to handle all doping cases involving the country's athletes. It can charge and convict athletes who have tested positive, a task that was previously handled by the various national sport federations.
Austria stepped up its efforts to eradicate doping after the 2006 Turin Olympics scandal, when Italian police raided the Austrian cross-country and biathlon team lodgings, seizing a large amount of doping products and equipment.
The raid triggered an investigation that led the International Olympic Committee to impose lifetime bans on four athletes. One of the penalties was reduced to a four-year ban by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The IOC also fined the Austrian Olympic Committee US$1 million for failing to prevent the blood-doping violations.
"This amendment is a further important step in the anti-doping fight," Austrian Sports Secretary Reinhold Lopatka said about the revised law in a statement Wednesday.
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