Labor's new problem: Government agencies on trial over drugs in sport

The drugs in sport story is veering off into dangerous territory for the federal Labor Government. Comments by the veteran and well respected rugby league coach Wayne Bennett in The Australian this morning illustrate why.

Rugby league and Australian football have been identified as the sports with the most prevalent drug issues, despite both codes conducting hundreds of drug tests — both urine and blood — each year.
‘‘Part of my beef with this is that if we’ve got the drug problem we have, what’s the drug agency been doing?’’ Bennett asked.
‘‘We pay them a lot of money to come into our sport and we’ve made a l ot of compromises for them to come into our sport.
‘‘Now they’re telling us we’ve got a problem. I can’t detect — I’ve got no means to do that. We employ them to do that.’’
The Australian Sports Drug Agency needs to take some action against those that the Australian  Crimes Commission believes are guilty and to take that action quickly. Otherwise the backlash against the two government bodies, already evident in the tabloids and on talk radio, will grow into criticism of the government itself.

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