If the players want to take coke & avoid a positive test all they have to do is forward plan.

But we can all surely agree that some of the players aren't the sharpest knives in the box.

Jeez, we have Jamie Peacock on the B.B.C. Rugby Panel & he's one of the brighter ones.

Forward Planning Boys.

I see Schoey and Ryan McGoldrick have had a bit of a twitter spat on this (McGoldrick claiming Schoey is just chasing headlines and a payday). But both pretty much admit it's rife, with McGoldrock also citing performance enhancing as being an issue too - he even claims 'Leeds favourite son' was caught and covered up....

can you tell me what benefits you see in recreational drugs like cocaine other than the dealer making money from someones expense,
I can see a controlled usage within medicinal no different to morphine, alcohol has similar effects when consumed in excess but nothing like the usage of cocaine

Alcohol is a recreational drug. Whatever benefits in principal you would argue for in favour of alcohol would be arguable for any recreational drug.

A bad pint will give you the 5hits , a bad dose of cocaine could kill you

Which is a good reason for legalising and regulating cocaine to ensure standards of purity.

Alcohol is the biggest risk factor for death, ill health and disability amongst 18-49 year olds. 70% of all violent crime on a weekend or night is alcohol related, 64% of all stranger violence is alcohol related. 704k violent crimes where the offender was under the influence of alcohol, which is 53% of all violent crime.

1.1m hospital admissions a year are due to alcohol related illness or injury, 339k hospital admissions because of alcohol overdose.

over 600k alcoholics in the uk, around 10k deaths per year from alcohol overdose or alcohol related illness. Alcohol related crime costs the country 13billion, alcohol related illness costs the NHS another 3.5billion.

Well actually if a pint was mixed with a number of dangerous chemicals it certainly could kill you. Thankfully we have a system by which it's production and distribution is regulated to make it as safe as possible. If we, as a society, knew that alcohol was being served with life threatening chemicals but chose not to regulate it and resisted any attempts to make it safer that would make us pretty bonkers wouldn't it?

This is getting to sound like the old school essay "If alcohol was a new product it would not be licensed" discuss. Alcohol is a dangerous thing that for cultural reasons we accept but try to minimise the risk of. The problem is that the alcohol argument muddies any discussion of other recreational drugs.
In California they have just licensed weed for public sale but without any of the health warnings that have to go on tobacco and alcohol packaging or the easy ability to detect use in drivers. You would think that we would let the scientific evidence of the dangers drive our thinking but that is not the case. Too often we simply give in to those who shout loudest or have the biggest cheque books or whatever is easiest.
It is very difficult to stop people using recreational drugs. Perhaps this thread should split in two. On One hand there are issues associated with recreational use and on the other hand the performance enhancing/changing aspect. I use performance changing because some of the meatheads going into the pitch pumped just become a danger to others rather than getting any better.

He'll end up going the same way as Terry newton.

That is unfortunately the very real worry - which makes the rest of the conversation irrelevant.

Whether it's genuine mental illness, or just poor life choices, or a mixture of the 2, he's clearly got a self destruct button and a trigger happy finger.

So then it's a question of is/has the game done enough to support him - he's certainly had plenty of opportunities and has had more than his fair share of '2nd, 3rd and 4th chances' at various clubs. We couldn't be sure what other support has been given to deal with whatever issues he has as an individual, but there does come a line where the game are no longer responsible and it's over to him and his friends/family to get things sorted (maybe with the help of the NHS etc).

Fundamentally though, my belief is that if the game was much tougher on some of the contributing factors such as drink, drugs, gambling so that anyone joining the sport at pro-level knows there is zero tolerance (and I mean absolute zero tolerance - not the 'turn a blind eye' zero tolerance we currently have), then we wouldn't have as many guys getting themselves into these issues - granted the individuals may still have the same problems (though I'd like to think some would never escalate down that route), but they'd never have been part of our game, so as harsh as it sounds, they wouldn't be our problem. Culturally, if it's a no go in our sport, we don't need to have this conversation.

I don't think zero tolerance towards drink is practical, no one would be able to field a team!

Not sorry to print the obvious:
Cocaine is illegal. Full stop.
If it's so widely used and abused as people have posted then , as RL cannot ignore or change legislation, then its use is something we need to challenge.


Comparing it to alcohol has no statistical standing.

What we have ignored is that many younger persons are drawn to illegal activity but Mr C seems to have this to a high level. So how do we prevent our players from dropping into such a sub-set. I do not think the stick is the main answer.

I don't think they drop into it - it's where they come from; if we were to adopt a zero tolerance approach to drinking, gambling, recreational drug use and chaotic lifestyles, there wouldn't be enough RL players to go around.

More media coverage from our friend Garry Schofield

rlhttps://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/4181256/cocaine-is-a-massive-problem-throughout-rugby-league-says-legend-garry-schofield/rl

Pint pot calling the kettle black.