Time to Get Tough: NASCAR Needs Hard and Fast Drug Policy

When is a policy not a policy? When it’s NASCAR’s nearly nonexistent drug policy, for one. The current “policy” is more a lack of one than anything, and it’s putting lives at risk.

To review, in order to test a driver or any crew member, NASCAR first wants a “reasonable suspicion.” That translates into others in the garage noticing the signs of drug use and reporting them to a NASCAR official. If enough people complain, NASCAR then decides whether or not to ask for a test. 

This is not a task that should be in untrained hands or left to chance, as the signs of drug use are complex and often difficult to spot, even by a trained eye, let alone the eye of a driver or crewman preoccupied with their own job. It should not be up to the teams alone, either, although every owner should be screening potential employees. Every driver carries the life and safety of every other driver in the race in his hands; every crew member working on a racecar has the driver’s life in his. 

Aaron Fike’s admission that he shot up heroin on race days while he was racing in the Craftsman Truck Series should have given NASCAR pause. It should have seen the sanctioning body scrambling to improve their policies. Instead, it only gave rise to NASCAR’s insistence that they have a wonderful system in place.

“We're different than other sports where we have multiple layers of independence,” NASCAR president Mike Helton said last week. “That's why we feel like the reasonable suspicion element that NASCAR implements has served its purpose and works well. But we know of car owners that have random testing programs with their employees. So those elements are already there.

“There's a lot of ways to attack this animal and a lot of ways to do it, but the shared responsibility between the competitors, the car owners and NASCAR, I think, works.”

Multiple layers of independence?  Maybe that’s the problem — if everyone is independently responsible, but nothing is being done, what good are the layers? Ultimately, it falls on the national sanctioning body to have a policy that actually works. And at the moment, it does not.

NASCAR got lucky on Fike; had he not been arrested for heroin possession, he could still be endangering the lives of every other driver on the track by racing while high. It got lucky on Jamie Skinner, who was caught by authorities, not NASCAR, and it got lucky on Kevin Grubb. In Grubb’s case, NASCAR caught him only with a beer, prompting his first suspension, though Grubb later admitted to using other, much more dangerous drugs.

Sure, they caught Shane Hmiel after a race. If they had suspicion to test him, shouldn’t that have happened before he was allowed on track with 42 other drivers?  They caught Tyler Walker after a qualifying session in 2007. And this works how?

Several of NASCAR’s biggest names have come forward and revealed that they have never been drug tested since making the jump to NASCAR’s touring series. Not once. Some have been in the game for years, some are multiple champions and they have no problem being tested — they just haven’t been asked.

Kevin Harvick tried to talk to NASCAR, but, “It almost seems like it fell on deaf ears. They were more mad that I had a reaction to the situation than they were about trying to move forward. They heard what I said, but my name’s not Jeff Gordon. I’m disappointed that we have to react and answer all these (Aaron Fike) questions again.”

It shouldn’t be about privacy. Harvick says he’d be happy to submit to testing, as he has nothing to hide and, he says, neither do most in the garage — and they’d be more than willing to prove it.

“If I have to pee in a cup 15 times a year, I'm happy to do it,” Harvick continued. “I want everybody in the world to know our sport is clean. I want fans and sponsors to know this garage is clean.”

Harvick and everyone in the garage who comes into contact with a racecar should be handed the proverbial cup at least twice a year. Twice annually should be the norm for crewmen and more often for the men who pilot these 200 mph behemoths inches from other teammates, competitors and friends. Each day of each race weekend, NASCAR should pull three to five bingo balls from the drum and every driver whose number comes up should be taken to the infield care center and asked to submit a urine sample. In addition, after the race, the driver of every car getting a post-race teardown should be tested. Any driver not selected randomly by Memorial Day should be pulled and tested and again by Labor Day and the end of the season.

A comprehensive drug testing policy is not about image, it’s not about privacy and it’s not about looking good for the media and fans. It’s about life and death. Drugs alter the ability to think and act rationally. They affect reaction time and judgment.

It took the death of a legend to bring about mandatory head and neck restraints and softer walls. Please, NASCAR, don’t make it come to the death of an innocent person to bring about this change. It’s just not worth the wait.

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