The Drug Testing Standards and Practices (DTSP) Committee of the Association of
Racing Commissions International (ARCI) is considering a major change to the
recommended penalties for violations of the association’s drug rules to
dramatically increase sanctions on those violations that can be considered
“doping” or “equine endangerment”.
An ARCI workgroup has been quietly working for the past year to
put together a system to increase penalties for violations categorized as
“Doping of Equine Endangerment”. Penalties for such violations
would be effectively doubled from the existing Class A penalties, with a first
violation requiring a two to five-year suspension of the trainer and a minimum
$50,000 fine which could be increased to $100,000 with aggravating circumstances.
A second violation in any jurisdiction would trigger a license
revocation.
The proposal would also impose a $25,000 fine on an owner if there
is a second lifetime offense in the owner’s stable in any jurisdiction. A
third offense would suspend the owner for a minimum of thirty days to as much
as a year and impose a minimum fine of $50,000 which could be increased to
$100,000.
Because of the seriousness of these violations a summary
suspension would be required, pending any appeal.
Existing penalties for medication overages would remain the same
and many would be re-categorized as a “Treatment Misapplication &
Mismanagement”. If the substance or the quantity of a
substance found in horse would warrant an equine endangerment charge it would
be the commission’s equine medical director or regulatory veterinarian who
would have to recommend such to the Stewards.
The proposal also contains a minimum $500 fine for a first-time
failure to keep or report required treatment records. A second offense
would bring a $2,500 fine, a third offense a $5,000 fine plus a referral to the
commission for possible license review.
In
August, 2017, the RCI Board tasked the DTSP Committee with performing a review
of the current penalty guidelines and structure with an eye toward
differentiating between violations that could clearly be called “doping” or “equine
endangerment” from those that were overages of therapeutic medications with
less of an impact on performance by virtual of being classified as a Class 4 or
5 drug.
Following
that meeting an online survey was conducted of DTSP Committee members and a
similar survey was conducted of interested industry contacts. A conference call
was held to discuss the project and a smaller group provided subsequent input.
Recognizing
that the task was a potentially enormous undertaking, Committee Chair Duncan
Patterson, the Chair of the Delaware Thoroughbred Commission, asked former RCI
Chair Dan Hartman to coordinate a workgroup to flesh out what a modified
penalty guideline system might look like.
The following individuals agreed to serve on the workgroup and literally spent
countless hours discussing almost every substance contained on the RCI
Classification Document. Those who worked on the project
were:
- Dr. Kathy Anderson, DVM - past
AAEP President;
- Dr. Charles Vail, DVM - past
AAEP President, former Colorado Racing Commissioner;
- Mr. John Ward - former
regulator and lifelong horseman;
- Rick Baedeker - former track
operator and current regulator;
- Mike Hopkins - former horseman
and lifelong regulator, and;
- Dan Hartman, current regulator.
At last week’s committee meeting at the ARCI Annual Conference in Arcadia,
California, the draft proposal was presented along with a request that it be
circulated for industry review, comment, and potential modification where
appropriate.
The draft documents are posted online and anyone interesting in commenting or
making a related proposal may do so by emailing comments or documents to rules@arci.com
The draft penalty matrix for “Doping and Equine Endangerment” can be downloaded
here or at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RnoaRh8DqUSsyQfzoeihAbSYPQfJuhEF/view.
The draft modified Classification schedule along with suggested penalty
categories can be downloaded here or at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rtaiT7YmgMhV7xkDIfZfKSyaMDBzKzgF/view. (Please note the tabs
at the bottom of the page on the Classification schedule which organizes
substances by Class.)
It is anticipated that this proposal will be a discussion item during the ARCI
summer meetings in Saratoga, details of which are posted on the ARCI website www.arci.com .
