This will effectively kill horse racing

[Cannon Shell]

http://www.paulickreport.com/news/ra...ance-on-drugs/

It is always comforting that federal legislation can be filed based on the "beliefs" of several friends of the Congressman with zero actual proof or evidence. It is also nice that instead of actually trying to come up with effective rules the people behind this crusade choose to throw out all common sense and "ban" everything despite zero evidence that simple detection of a medication at a microscopic level can have any effect on a horses performance.

Using the theory that a horse should be immune to all physical frailties in order to be able to run (which is pretty much the theory that the agenda people operate under) means that virtually every horse I have ever trained shouldn't have been allowed to run. Making "zero tolerance" a law will effectively make it impossible to fill a card as it will be necessary to withdraw all medications, even innocuous ones that treat chronic issues like stomach ulcers or allergies, a week or more to avoid a ridiculously minute positive. If you asked the NFL to operate under this standard you would have a 2 game season. Owners will rapidly leave the sport simply because this legislation makes a large percentage of the equine population impossibly expensive to train. At some point, maybe sooner than later, the industry will be asked to pay for this legislation and that will most certainly come from a take out increase and possibly from purses.

And in the end like the banning of steroids, all the supposed "good" that will occur, won't, and this will be all for naught.....as usual. This is like banning all human medications because some people abuse Xanex. They just miss the point.