The campaign, #ChooseTheRightTrack,is being promoted under its new PureSport banner by the sportswear company SKINS. Johnson, who is not being paid for his involvement, has been joined on his tour of duteousness by SKINS Chairman Jaimie Fuller as they have proposed a series of what they believe are necessary changes to an anti-doping system which, Johnson believes, has improved but little since he was an athlete.

Twenty five years after winning the Olympic 100m title, Ben Johnson is due back in Seoul at the end of an anti-doping campaign

"Not a lot has changed in the last 25 years," Johnson tells insidethegames. "People are still testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs like they were when I was competing.

"Twenty five years ago I knew that other people were doping and I had the decision of whether I should do it or not. Speaking for myself, I felt like I needed to try and please people in my camp. I felt like most of the athletes I was going to be competing against would be doing the same thing. Twenty five years on, as an older man, I see people making the same mistake."

It is in an effort to prevent that cycle of mistrust and repetition that these two men have been putting in time on the ground and in the air as they seek to get their message to the widest of audiences.

It is always possible to be cynical about such ventures. Might not part of Fuller's motivation in this be commercial, given that the health of his company is integrally bound up with the health of cycling and other sports it equips? Is he not simply trying to save his own SKINS?

And what of Johnson, the man whose notorious coach, Charlie Francis, insisted until his dying day that he had needed to dope in order not to start two yards down on his rivals - who, it was maintained with conviction, had to be doping too? Johnson, the man who returned from his post-Seoul ban to fail not one but two more doping tests before earning a life ban? Can this leopard really have changed his spots?

Ben Johnson's coach Charlie Francis, seen here after his charge's victory in the 1988 Olympic 100m final, believed doping was required to put his athletes on a level playing field with their rivals

Anyone who has heard Fuller speak, particularly in the wake of the Lance Armstrong doping debacle, and witnessed his dogged efforts to energise an ethical changing of the guard at the very top of cycling's administration, will not have any difficulty in believing in his sincerity. Yes of course there will be commercial gain for him if cycling can maintain and build on its credibility and popularity. But he has gone well beyond the extra mile in seeking to establish such a change.

As for Johnson - when one hears his quiet voice - so different from what you might imagine from the brash figure that crossed the line in Seoul with a finger of triumph raised derisively to the sky - it is also hard to believe that he does not mean what he is now saying.

Ben Johnson raises his finger to the world to mark his victory in the 1988 Olympic 100m final in a world record time of 9.79sec

"The time is right for me to speak out," he says. "As I've grown older, I've realised that all the things I did were wrong. Athletes need better support and guidance and I want to use the tour to highlight the real problems that exist between administrators and athletes. Until they're confronted, the situation will always be the same - and will probably get worse."

The campaign has three main proposals. Firstly, it maintains that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) must have "a transparent, unambiguous mandate that provides independence to its activities and adequate funding to effectively implement the code, free from political interference."

Secondly it is proposed that an Athlete's Support Council (ASC) reporting to WADA be established to support, educate and offer whistle-blowing services to athletes and bridge the cultural gap and mistrust that exists between the administrators and the athletes.

Thirdly, it recommends that a Truth and Reconciliation process similar to the one which has been widely discussed within the doping-blitzed sport of cycling must be initiated to allow certain sports to "break the doping culture chain and give access to a level of intelligence that can only be enjoyed through maximum cooperation from current and ex-dopers."

As part of the campaign, Johnson has been inviting sports fans to sign a petition demanding action to improve the credibility of world sport which will be delivered to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and WADA at the conclusion of the tour. Fans can join the petition by clicking here.

Fuller adds: "Ben personified the modern era of doping but after 25 years, he's now in the best position to publicise this campaign. As an athlete, he had no outside help when he needed it and the Athlete Support Council is something he can definitely relate to."

Johnson's "personification" of the modern doping era is something has, rightly or wrongly,engendered a sense of resentment in him which he has made no secret of in recent years. He has made it clear that he feels he has been wrongly singled out as the "bad man" when, in his and others' estimation, he was only doing what many another fellow athlete was doing at the time.

The last year has, however, brought a grim kind of comfort for Johnson in that he has now been joined as sport's Mr Doping, in the public perception, by Lance Armstrong, whose seven Tour de France titles have gone the way of his own gold medal and world record in the wake of doping admissions.

Lance Armstrong, pictured during the 2010 Tour de France, is now as synonymous with doping in sport has Ben Johnson has been for the last quarter of a century

Asked if he has any sympathy for the disgraced cyclist who maintained his innocence so fervently for so many years, Johnson answers immediately and, you feel, honestly - if not politically...

"We are all human beings." he says. "We all make mistakes in life. I feel for him. Hopefully he will overcome the situation - but it's going to be tough for quite a while. I should know. It's a situation you have to live with all the time. I wish him the best.

"Every time people talk about a doping positive people talk about Ben Johnson. But now I'm just trying to get the message across. I'm happy I'm doing this, deep down in my heart. When I was doing drugs I knew I wasn't doing it right.

"It happened to a lot of athletes in the early 80s. People started to talk to me about it in 1983, and I started on doping in 1984, round about March, April.

"I missed my shots very often during my cycle. My coach says 'You must come in and get your shots. It's time in your plan.' Sometimes I did show up. But sometimes I didn't. I didn't feel comfortable taking drugs. I didn't feel right. I'm telling you how it was.

"There were some clean athletes out there, but back then you have to understand that I had said yes to steroids. I was trying to please some people in my camp. I didn't want to be a disappointment to them."

Fuller believes that the way forward lies not through technology, nor sterner punishments, but through truly constructive dialogue.

"There have been a number of technological advances and better techniques for detecting doping through methods such as blood testing and athlete profiles," he says. "But the reality is that every time a new technique arrives people are exploring new technical methods to get away with it.

"We need to change the course of this discussion. There has been far too much focus on testing. Testing is a critical part of the anti-doping system. But what is more important is to extend beyond testing to attack the culture of the problem.

"We believe that there is chasm between the athletes and the national anti-doping agencies – a cultural chasm caused by the loss of trust and confidence in the anti-doping procedure. It partly explains the mindset of trying to take things and get away with it, while for their part the authorities are concerned with prosecuting and punishing.

"The authorities have to earn the trust of the athletes. The majority of athletes just want to be able to believe the people they are competing against are clean as well."

Fuller maintains that WADA needs to re-position itself in the sporting world in order to free itself of potential political pressure, something he believes would become easier if they were to be funded more than their current annual amount of just $26 million (£16 million/€19 million) - half of which comes from the IOC.

"Success very much depends on how well we do things globally, and we can see that there are too many agencies involved, or agencies with vested interests," Fuller says. "Certain national anti-doping bodies might be under government influence not to catch cheaters, for instance.

It is essential for the world doping control body to be funded independently, so there is no pressure that can be applied by international federations or from the IOC.

"We can see the capacity for influence to be applied to the WADA as they are working with international federations, most of whom have a representative on the IOC. So there is the capacity for pressure to be applied over doping controls."

Fuller laments the recent decision not to offer the Presidency of WADA to the former world and Olympic 400m hurdles champion Ed Moses, favouring instead the highly respected establishment figure of Sir Craig Reedie, the 72-year-old British IOC member who has led the Evaluation Commission which has just helped to determine the decision over which city should host the 2020 Olympics - a judgement that went in Tokyo's favour.

Former world and Olympic 400m hurdles champion Ed Moses, pictured during this year's IAAF World Championships in Moscow, would have been the best choice as President of the World Anti-Doping Agency, believes Jaimie Fuller, the founding force of the ChooseTheRightTrack anti-doping campaign

"I have never spoken to Reedie, but I was staggered when the IOC missed the opportunity to put in place one of the greatest athletes in history, Ed Moses," he says. "There was a huge international missed opportunity there. I believe Ed Moses could have gained the trust of athletes and helped to narrow that cultural gap. I was devastated when the position went to an IOC politico.

"We want to see WADA able to say to recalcitrant national anti-doping agencies 'If you don't comply, we are banning you from the next Olympic Games.' We need real time access to some of these places, with WADA being able to go in and have a close look and if they find anything, to do something about it. We need to give WADA the power to pull some of these people into line and to ask what are the IOC doing about it.

"We would also like to see them moving to implement a programme seeking to set up an Athlete Support Council and to ensure greater investigative opportunities instead of focusing on public relations exercises such as organising 6,000 urine tests in a year."

Fuller maintains that offering counselling and advice in confidentiality through the Athlete Support Council, to be provided by the IOC and administered by WADA, is the right way forward.

He points out that athletes currently have no support mechanism with the express purpose of getting rid of doping, and that the organisations which currently offer counselling and guidance also conduct the testing and prosecution of athletes.

"It will also offer the opportunity of whistle-blowing," he adds. "At first this would be on a strictly no names, no pack drill basis. And then, only if the athlete was happy to do so, it would be a case of them volunteering to offer details to the national anti-doping agencies."

Fuller sees this as being effective in curbing those coaches and managers whose instigations have so often prompted athletes to embrace doping in the manner of Johnson.

"This would change the dynamic," Fuller insists. "The moment the coach or manager sees and understands the athlete is talking to the council you will find it modifies their behaviour. It's another check and balance on the situation. It will be a torch shining on an area and showing up those who have interests other than that of their athlete's wellbeing.

"Truth and Reconciliation is a different mechanism, although to the same end. In cycling, after what I hope will be a change of Presidency in the UCI, it will offer the chance to get some proper intelligence about what is going on and to draw a line in the sand on doping.

"If that turns out to be successful in cycling, it will offer a road map to other sports, and I would like to see that approach taken in athletics with WADA invited to the process.

"The petition we have launched is just another way of getting the IOC to acknowledge the way forward. We know the approach is right. We see that there is a fundamental flaw in the area of anti-doping. It's like dealing with an alcoholic. The first step is acknowledgement. The first step is to get the people in the IOC to say, 'This problem is very real.'"

That first step appears now to have been taken by Ben Johnson, who now speaks with enthusiasm about how the problem of doping can be properly addressed.

Boxers at the first Youth Olympics in Singapore 2010 - Ben Johnson believes it is vital to target young sportsmen and women at this age to prevent them doping

"The way it can change is if athletes can have someone to talk to who will tell them the right decision to take," he says. "It's not just about punishment. You have to light the candle at both ends. You need to be talking to 17-18 year olds who are heading for the Youth Olympics or the junior World Championships.