Addressing a drug problem that is not a problem at all

Good thing Aaron Fike wasn't an outfielder or a second baseman. With all the focus on drugs in Major League Baseball, in the aftermath of the juiced-ball era and Jose Canseco's book and the Mitchell Report, surely he'd have been busted by Bud Selig long before he and his girlfriend were arrested in the parking lot of an Ohio amusement park with syringes of heroin stuck in their arms.

Well, maybe not. If Fike had been shooting up performance enhancers like androstanediol or nandrolone or methyltestosterone, he almost certainly would have been caught and suspended for 50 games. But not for heroin, something he likely wouldn't have been tested for. Because when it comes to street drugs, the masters of the so-called national pastime use a different approach. It's called reasonable cause.

Sound familiar? It should. It's the same tactic NASCAR uses with its drivers, a tactic that's come under fire from critics and competitors alike now that Fike has admitted to using drugs on race days. As a result the sanctioning body of major stock-car racing has been portrayed as a pariah, a head-in-the-sand organization out of step with other professional sports. Former Daytona 500 champion Kevin Harvick blasted NASCAR for what he called an outdated drug policy. Bucking the national trend among athletes, virtually every top driver in the Sprint Cup garage area voiced support for random testing.

It's all raised quite a din. Yes, NASCAR has a substance-abuse policy every driver must agree to before he steps into the car, and officials can test anyone at anytime. Yes, offenders in NASCAR -- the few that there have been -- face brutally tough penalties beginning with an indefinite ban and ending with a lifetime one. But the picture being painted here is one that shows NASCAR on the wrong side of the moral fence, as the only pro sport acting lenient when all the others are getting tough. Completely lost in the argument is the reason why all those other sports have stiffer drug-testing policies, and it's not to stop one kid in an amusement park parking lot from shooting up smack.

It's to prevent athletes from gaining a chemical edge. With the notable exception of the NBA -- where marijuana use has become entrenched, and players are routinely arrested for possession -- every other sport tests first and foremost for performance-enhancers such as steroids. Peruse the list of banned substances in a team sport drug policy, all you'll get bogged down by compounds like noretiocholanolone and beta-2 agonists. Substance-abuse drugs like cocaine and heroin are way down the list, if they're mentioned at all. Baseball doesn't test for street drugs. The NCAA can't, leaving that task up to its member schools. To cast NASCAR as something of an oblivious, lone outpost in the war on drugs is to manipulate the truth.

The reason the Olympics began drug testing in 1976? Steroids. The reason the NFL began drug testing in 1990? Steroids. The reason tennis began drug testing in 1993? Steroids. The reason the NHL began drug testing in 2006? Steroids. The reason professional cycling conducts drug tests? Steroids. The reason the PGA Tour is implementing a drug-testing policy next year? Steroids. The reason for the recent upheaval in Major League Baseball? Steroids.

In each of those sports, the athlete can clearly benefit through the use of a performance-enhancing drug. Not so in NASCAR, where the raw skills are all bundled in reflex and nerve. Harvick can take all the tetrahydrogestrinone he wants, and it's not going to help him with the Sprint Cup title.

It's completely understandable that the specter of street drugs can cause nervousness and apprehension among athletes who compete in 3,450-pound vehicles traveling at speeds approaching 200 mph. It's incredibly impressive that virtually every top driver voiced support for random testing, a stance that shows what being a sports role model is all about. But it's also an obvious overreaction to see one kid arrested for doing drugs, and deduce that an entire sport has a problem when there's simply no evidence to support it. In 60 years of competition, with 123 drivers competing weekly in three national divisions, NASCAR has suspended fewer than 10 drivers for substance-abuse violations. It's laudable that drivers are so willing to root out the problem. But there's no problem to root out.

Several top drivers on NASCAR's premier circuit voiced support for a change in NASCAR's drug testing policy.

• Complete story, click here
• Helton defends drug policy

Yet Fike wants NASCAR to toughen its drug policy. Of course he does. He has to. He avoided jail time by promising a judge in Warren County, Ohio, that he'd preach an anti-drug message. In return, prosecutors agreed to reduce his felony heroin possession charge to a misdemeanor, and sentenced him to two years' probation. A convicted drug user speaking out against NASCAR's drug policy, when he has to speak out against drugs to stay out of jail? It comes across as a bit self-serving, to say the least.

This isn't the safety crisis, which was painfully obvious in accidents like the one that injured Ernie Irvan and killed John Nemechek, a brewing storm anyone could see coming long before the disastrous events of 2000 and 2001. There's so little outside concern over drugs in NASCAR that when Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns proposed a 2005 bill that would have standardized drug testing in professional sports, the auto racing series wasn't included. The ill-fated Drug Free Sports Act would have covered only the NFL, NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and Arena Football League. Nobody was summoning Mike Helton to Capitol Hill.

If drivers want more stringent drug testing, they need to take those concerns to their team owners, and take part in whatever screenings an organization like Hendrick Motorsports or Joe Gibbs Racing conducts of its other employees. You want league-wide random testing? All right, then be prepared for something like what players are subjected to in the NFL -- a humiliating procedure in which subjects providing a urine sample must remove their shirts, pull their pants down to their knees, and be observed from the front to eliminate any chance of tampering. That's the real world of drug testing, one drivers might be a little more hesitant to embrace.

On its own, the fact that so many drivers seem willing to submit to random testing should make it obvious that the participants in this sport have nothing to hide. We're not talking about the NFL, where Ricky Williams was banned for marijuana use and then let back into the sport. We're not talking about Major League Baseball, where Steve Howe was suspended seven times. We're not talking about the NBA, a revolving door of misdemeanor drug charges. Want to find the drug users in NASCAR? They're racing in other, smaller series after being kicked out of the big show. In that regard, NASCAR has the toughest drug policy of them all.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.