'Drugs in sport' a political smokescreen

This past week may just go down as the time Australian sport was hijacked by an election campaign as the 'drugs in sport' issue gave the government a breather from a week of bad press.

Sure, it was initially Essendon that set the agenda last Tuesday when they came forward with their concerns about supplement use, concerns that now look legitimate after the AFL confirmed on Sunday the Bombers are being investigated along with an unnamed player from another club.

But if this is the extent of the AFL's problem with performance-enhancing drugs then the amount of drug use in the NRL must be pretty extensive to justify last week's Australian Crime Commission (ACC) press conference.

On Thursday last week, in front of the Australian Minister for Sport Kate Lundy and Justice Minister Jason Clare, not to mention the stony-faced CEOs of all the major sporting codes, the ACC released their findings into Project Aperio with a report dramatically titled 'Organised Crime and Drugs In Sport'.

ACC chief John Lawler detailed how organised crime supplied banned Performance and Image Enhancing Drugs (PIED) through various middle men to sportspeople, who could then potentially be blackmailed by criminal gangs, leading to matches possibly being fixed.

In one fell swoop, pretty much every Australian sport was tarnished and the vast majority of our sportspeople were subsequently under suspicion for using banned substances and throwing matches.

All these sportspeople were effectively guilty without the chance to prove their innocence as the ACC maintained that 'legal reason' after 'legal reason' prevented the disclosure of any information relating to the code, the team or the individuals being investigated.

Now, all that is probably true; I don't have any knowledge on performance-enhancing substances or organised crime or the legalities of the situation, so who am I to doubt what the ACC have said.

However, the timing of this report and the fact it was released with such an orchestrated press conference last week makes it seem like other, political, factors were at play.

This may seem like a conspiracy theory but a few factors lend it weight.

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'Drugs in sport' a political smokescreen