Get tougher on drugs, Carey urges
AFL great Wayne Carey believes the league’s “soft” stand on drugs has led to players chancing their arm with banned substances.
AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan this week forecast a review of the league’s drugs policies, which have come under fire in recent years against the back-drop of the continuing Essendon saga and a string of players from other clubs testing positive for banned substances.
But the AFL is yet to commit to changing the current system.
Any attempt to toughen the controversial illicit-drugs policy faces likely opposition from the players given it is a voluntary code.
Former North Melbourne star Carey said the illicit-drugs policy, which contains the divisive ‘three strikes’ rule and allows players to self-report to avoid being suspended, was in need of an overhaul.
“It all comes back to the three-strikes rule — the lenient stance that the AFL has taken with this,” Carey told Triple M radio.
“When it first came out, I thought, ‘Yeah, OK, that’ll work’, but then when you hear that there are players on two strikes and then have gone and self-reported, and we still don’t know who those players are ... but they’ve self-reported when they’ve got three strikes, so therefore they haven’t had any suspension or been named or anything else.”
Carey believed the AFL’s lenience on drugs had led to situations like that of Collingwood pair Lachy Keeffe and Josh Thomas, who have both tested positive to the banned substance clenbuterol.
Their positive tests fall under the ASADA anti-doping code and the players are now under provisional suspension.
“I think that lenient stance is the very reason why we continue to get things like the Collingwood boys,” Carey said.
“I honestly believe that there aren’t too many players that go out there and would deliberately take a performance-enhancing drug and my understanding is that there could be a link between illicit drugs and performance-enhancing drugs and they get mixed in with one another.
“Because of that soft stance by the AFL, the players still roll the dice.”
Carey documented his own troubles with illegal drugs and alcohol in his autobiography, which was released in 2009.
A dual North Melbourne premiership player, Carey played 272 games and kicked 727 goals with the Kangaroos and Adelaide.
