That’s like making murder legal to ease pressure on prisons.

Then at the other end of the spectrum if your clamp down harder you risk allowing another drug to come in and take its place like legal highs did eg bubble, meow meow, spice.

Yeah, I'm not sure that Goulding is someone you want as your spokesman. Besides, if you read his words, he's defending the players, not Wigan - which is the wrong way around.

Yeah people are giving stick to Goulding but he’s not the one preaching like Carney has. His point is that he doesn’t believe Carney was ‘squeaky clean’ himself (therefore a hypocrite) although he does agree with his sentiment.

I haven't wanted to comment directly on this one because when drink driving, drug use and/or violence are involved in a topic I think it can really stoke emotion inside people that have had experiences of it. I would not want to preach to someone who lost a love one to a drink/drug driver or maybe a loved one to drug abuse. Even someone who has experienced a violent assault or verbal abuse may take offence to anything said in defense. It is human nature.

However, a very good friend of mine is a Police officer with GMP, he has said on several occasions through 7 years of traffic policing, in 90% of the roadside stoppages he performs when alchohol/drugs are suspected he is still surprised when he first approaches the vehicle...he said the split is fairly even between men/women but what surprises him most is the fact that in a far more cases than we would want to believe the occupations are quite discouraging, GP's/solicitors, surgeons/politicians, teachers and even fellow Police Officers are just as frequent as your let us say, lesser jobs or even Sports personalities. So my point, although long winded is that whilst our boys should know better, and the disappoint us, they are a small fraction of what is an alarming problem for society on the whole, no matter what warnings are offered or given human beings will always cock-up and make bad decisions.

I am in no way condoning what any of the above mentioned players have done but we must as humans understand that for the years behind us and for many years ahead of us that this cycle will continue. Educating the young players on the dangers of driving whilst under the influence of either alcohol or drugs is all that can be done by the club, examples must be made. Whilst Zak and young Mullen are punished by a driving ban and a financial penalty, they must be made to understand that in both cases the end result could of been far worse with the loss of a life.

Regards all sports personalities and drug use, there is very little chance Cocaine will ever be eradicated, given its stimulant similarities to the performance enhancing workout powders/drinks that supplement companies produce (yes Musclepharm included) that they are recommended to use for training and game day, it is very addictive and is a social influencer, in most cases now within groups of socialites it is almost laughable when someone refrains from using.

Very interesting post - Im sure the mental health crisis in this country has a lot to do with more and more people turning to drink and drugs as a way of coping.

30/40 years ago drink driving was seen as socially acceptable and was common place despite the obvious dangers. Nowadays, most people find it totally unacceptable and rightly so!
However, some of those same people see some use of recreational drugs as socially acceptable. It’s not.
The use of drugs socially is why levels of most serious violent crime are soaring. Shootings in inner cities are usually down to rival organised crime groups fighting over drug turf. Burglaries, robberies, theft of or from vehicles and mostly committed by people trying to fund drug habits, be it cocaine, heroin, cannabis, Khet etc isn’t relevant. The use of drugs in society is rife but completely at the heart of most criminality nationwide. There’ll be people who agree with me and people who don’t. I don’t know how or if we will ever stop it. It’s a debate that would take far too much time to have properly on a forum like this.

Spot on pal

Give over. It’s a widespread social activity that is in the most part totally harmless. Murder isn’t.

Make it legal then (cocaine) together with heroin and sell them in pubs and clubs. Once it's settled in there then let's start selling them in schools.
Oh and bullocks to the poor saps in Columbia who should be grateful that the west needs these harmless drugs because the no marks who use them don't give a flying shoite about anything other than themselves.

Totally harmless? Really? Honestly? Jesus...

Jesus wept!!

That’s the most gob smacking post I’ve seen in a long time on here. Seriously ill educated post.

If you had experience of being on the other side of someone on a cocaine fuelled rampage trying to restrain them or trying to deal with them and seeing them go through into Acute Behavior Disorder (ABD) which is a life threatening condition and then had to perform CPR battling to keep them alive, watching as paramedics and air ambulance perform life saving treatment on the street, you would never say such a ridiculous thing.