Commentary : Controversy Over Drug Tests in Racing Shows There’s Double Standard

A news conference at Santa Anita Park Wednesday failed to resolve any of the mysteries surrounding the positive tests for cocaine on horses trained by Wayne Lukas and Laz Barrera, but it did make this much clear: The controversy over drug use and drug testing in California is just beginning.

Leonard Foote, executive secretary of the California Horse Racing Board, said Wednesday that he expected tests on other frozen urine specimens to yield more such “positives.” As this controversy grows, it raises at least two key questions with implications for the whole industry:

-- Does the sport have a reasonably efficient system for detecting illegal drugs and enforcing penalties against them?

-- Is there a dual system of justice for powerful, big-name trainers and small-timers?

The California brouhaha had its origins when a positive test for cocaine was found in a horse trained by Roger Stein; the stewards promptly barred him from entering other horses, slapped him with a $2,000 fine and a six-month suspension. The CHRB recently had acquired new, sophisticated testing equipment, so its chemists went back to conduct tests for cocaine on urine specimens that had been frozen for months. Foote said that the cocaine by itself wouldn’t be useful for hopping horses, but suspected that it was being used as an ingredient in some kind of a drug “cocktail” -- as cocaine and heroin were used years ago in a mixture called a speedball.

From those batches of frozen samples came the positives from the stables of two of the most famous trainers in America, Lukas and Barrera.

Turf writer Jay Privman interviewed Barrera shortly after the findings were announced and said the trainer was almost in tears. “Everybody knows my principles and my morals,” the trainer said. “I’m not going to damage my work for so many years. It’s very painful for a person who has put all his life into this business. I’ve had two open-heart surgeries and never took any drugs -- that’s how much I hate drugs.”

Lukas’ response was just as impassioned and articulate, and most people in the game felt sympathy for the two famed horsemen -- sympathy that most certainly was not evident for Roger Stein or some of the other small-timers whose horses tested positive. Nobody threw the book immediately at Lukas and Barrera. Unlike Stein, they were allowed to continue entering their horses.

Foote said the different treatment for the trainers was based on the fact that the Barrera and Lukas positives came in races at Del Mar last year, but the case smacks of a dual standard that is patently unfair. Moreover, there is no basis for the common notion that small-timers would do most of the cheating with drugs while men with major stables have too much to lose to take such a risk. New York’s two dominant trainers in recent years -- Oscar Barrera and Peter Ferriola -- won hundreds of races and earned millions of dollars before they were caught using illegal medications.

The thoroughbred sport ought to offer equal justice for all, but the growing question about its drug-testing procedure is whether it can offer justice for anybody. Stein’s attorney raised many issues about the possible fallibility of the tests during a 12-hour hearing into the trainer’s case on Tuesday, pointing out that there are many ways in which the urine specimen could have been contaminated in the testing lab.

Many specifics of California’s testing procedure came under attack -- as well as the so-called “absolute insurer rule,” which mandates that the trainer is held ultimately responsible for the condition of his horse, even if a drug were administered without his knowledge. Foote acknowledged at the news conference, “That rule may be inequitable at times, but we can’t find an alternative to it.” Even racing officials know they can be put on the defensive in cases involving drug positives.

There are certainly no easy answers in the racing industry’s quest to police the sport, but one way to approach the issue might be to concentrate on looking for patterns of abuse by a given trainer.

If a trainer knows of an effective illegal drug that can escape detection in his state, it hardly seems plausible that he would use it only once. If California’s testing lab finds a single cocaine positive on a horse trained by Laz Barrera -- but finds no others in all the many horses he sent to the post -- it is probable that the positive was an error or a fluke. By contrast, when New York officials caught Ferriola with three drug positives in a short period of time, that was pretty persuasive evidence of wrongdoing.

Racing officials are only going to lose when they prosecute single, isolated offenses, and they are apt to administer an unfair scale of justice, treating the Steins more harshly than the Barreras and the Lukases. They ought to concentrate on finding the real cheaters and throwing the book at them, regardless of their reputation.