The next time you hear anyone in sport speak with piety or probity about the fight against doping, remember the following sentence (in fact, cut it out and pin it to your fridge). There is no general appetite to undertake the effort and expense of a successful effort to deliver doping-free sport. These are not my words. They come in a 2013 report led by Dick Pound, the former chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, when asked to examine why testing programmes are so unsuccessful. But they cut to the heart of the chase.

Because for all the recent talk of micro-dosing and other cutting-edge techniques in the – unproven – allegations against Mo Farah’s coach, Alberto Salazar, we should not forget this: tests exist for all the major performance-enhancers, including EPO, human growth hormone, testosterone, designer steroids and stimulants. We are far better at identifying banned drugs than we have ever been. The science is far less of a problem than resources and willpower.

No one knows how many athletes cheat. When questioned in 2013 Pound reckoned that 10% was a “conservative” number. An anonymous survey of over 2,000 athletes, conducted by researchers on behalf of Wada in 2011, estimated 29% of athletes at the world championships and 45% at the Pan-Arab Games admitted they had knowingly violated anti-doping regulations by using a prohibited substance or method in the past 12 months, an astonishing figure if true.

Yet we do know this: despite the advances in testing and the formation of Wada in 1999, the percentage of positive doping tests – around 1% – has not changed much since 1985. For all the efforts of the anti-doping community it is too easy for athletes to slip through the net.

What can be done? In his 2013 report Pound makes 90 recommendations and while there are more bullet points than magic bullets, there are a number of measures that could alter the shape of the battle. For a start anti-doping agencies should use the $400 Carbon Isotope Ratio (CIR) tests far more frequently than they do. Want to know how effective these are? Ask Justin Gatlin. He would never have been found using testosterone in 2006 without one. In almost every case, though, anti-doping agencies use the cheaper Testosterone/Epitestosterone (TE) test first – with CIR used as a nail-in-the-coffin test only after a positive TE one.

When I spoke to Victor Conte, the man at the heart of the Balco scandal in 2003, last week he pointed out CIR had other benefits too, including extending the detection period for fast-acting testosterone gels and creams from a few hours to several days. “If somebody uses this stuff at night and they showed up the next morning and they did CIR they would bust you,” he said. “If they did the TE ratio test – sorry, you are under the radar.”

CIR tests can also be used retrospectively, allowing investigators to examine frozen samples. The announcement of comprehensive retesting of samples from the Beijing and London Olympic Games wouldn’t just ruffle a few feathers, it would show that those in authority were dedicated to clean sport.

As Pound noted, missed tests are also being used by athletes to avoid testing without consequences. Yet here the rules have recently softened. It used to be that if you were absent three times over a rolling 18-month period when the testers came knocking it would count as a failed test. Now that has been cut to 12 months, reducing the timescale for which you can be held liable for missing a test.

“It is like a speeding ticket on your driving record,” Conte says. “At the end of the one year, or whatever time you got the first missed test, it drops off. This is a big loophole because athletes on performance-enhancing drugs are able to get a steroid cycle in without any consequences.”

Many in the anti-doping world would like athletes to be allowed only one missed test in 12 months, with the second counting as a doping charge, to increase the pressure on those cheating.

A third issue: as things stand, anti-doping agencies make a distinction only between in-competition and out-of-competition testing. That is too imprecise. Out of competition could mean anything from a few days before a major race to the off-season. An extra category, revealing how many times an athlete was tested between November and March when they are more likely to be using steroids to put on strength and muscle, would be welcome.

Somewhere approaching a gold standard would be to have Wada staff in every country, coupled with an independent testing agency for every sport. Last year Wada’s director general, David Howman, said that would cost $100m a year. With every doping scandal and allegation it seems a small price to pay but no one seems willing to stump up the cash. While the IOC got $7.75bn from its deal with NBC to show the next six Olympic and Winter Olympic Games, Wada’s budget is only $26.5m.

Still, there are people fighting the good fight and it was reassuring to hear Ed Warner, the head of UK Athletics, urge the IAAF to spend more of its reserves to tackle doping.

“This is something that has been with us forever and feels like it probably will be with us forever,” he sighed. He is right. Yet while sport may never completely cauterise the damage from doping, it still needs to do far more to stem the bleeding.