It is a joke for many people with the means to do this, but it works pretty well for many people too. It sends alot of people out of the IPF into non-tested federations because they know they are doping, and don't know how to beat the tests.
But at the top level, drug testing is almost useless I agree, but the IPF recently caught a fair few of the russian international PL team!!! Not that that makes much of a difference, unless the whole team gets banned(which it might haha), as they pretty much have another 10 lifters that will win the worlds anyway
I think it works well in Australia, in Powerlifting anyway. As the Powerlifting community is so small, with only a couple hundred IPF lifters. We pretty much only have 2 feds here, IPF affiliated, and WPC affiliated. Most of the doping athletes just go to the WPC fed, as most just don't have the means to fool the drug test. Granted we still do get a few who are doping, but not too many.