NASCAR Confirms Mayfield Tested Positive for Meth

[clevfan]

July 1, 2009

NASCAR Confirms Mayfield Tested Positive for Meth

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:32 p.m. ET

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- NASCAR confirmed Wednesday that suspended driver Jeremy Mayfield tested positive for methamphetamines.

The confirmation came outside federal court after Mayfield's attorney mentioned the illegal substance several times during a 45-minute argument against the driver's indefinite suspension. Court recessed after Bill Diehl's argument and is set to reconvene Wednesday afternoon.

''We will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jeremy Mayfield did violate the NASCAR substance abuse policy and tested positive for methamphetamines,'' spokesman Ramsey Poston said.

Diehl argued in court that Mayfield has never shown any characteristics of a meth abuser, and if he used the drug at the levels NASCAR has suggested, Mayfield would be ''either a walking zombie or he's dead.

''His teeth were never rotting out, his eyes were not sunken,'' Diehl said. ''He never displayed any characteristics that are commonly seen by everyone among people who use meth.''

In an affidavit filed last week, Mayfield denied ever using methamphetamines and said he didn't know how he failed a random drug test taken May 1. He was suspended eight days later after his backup ''B'' sample also came back positive for a banned substance.

Previously, NASCAR had refused to disclose what substance Mayfield tested positive for, and blacked out the name of the drug in all court filings leading up to Wednesday's hearing, which was attended by NASCAR chairman Brian France and president Mike Helton.

Diehl said outside court that it's been common knowledge in the industry that Mayfield tested positive for methamphetamines.

Mayfield has blamed his positive test result on the combination of Adderall for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Claritin-D for allergies, an explanation repeatedly debunked by NASCAR's program administrator.

Mayfield is challenging the validity of NASCAR's testing system, and Diehl argued it's flawed because Mayfield never had the opportunity to get his backup ''B'' sample tested by an independent laboratory. Nashville, Tenn.-based Aegis Sciences Corp., which runs NASCAR's testing program, tested both of Mayfield's samples.

Diehl argued that federal guidelines allow an individual a 72-hour window to have an independent lab analyze a sealed backup sample. He said that when Aegis tested the backup ''B'' sample two days after the ''A'' sample came back positive, Mayfield lost any opportunity to challenge the results because the seal had been broken on the second sample.

He also condemned NASCAR for acting as if its policies are above federal guidelines, and for not having a clear drug policy with a defined list of banned substances. Although NASCAR provided crews with a list of prohibited substances, drivers do not have one because NASCAR reserves the right to test for anything at any time.

''They say 'We're not bound by anything. We're NASCAR. We can do what we want to do,''' Diehl said. ''If they decide to ban Coca-Cola, or coffee or orange juice, their argument is 'We can.'

''That smells bad, and it stinks enough that the court should intervene.''

Diehl wants U.S. District Court Judge Graham Mullen to reinstate Mayfield on Wednesday in time to travel to this weekend's race at Daytona International Speedway. He said NASCAR would not be harmed by Mayfield racing this weekend, and the sanctioning body can drug test Mayfield every day going forward.

''Independence Day for Jeremy ought to be today,'' Diehl told Mullen, noting that Saturday night's race falls on the holiday.

Mayfield indicated outside court he will go to Daytona if he's reinstated, but he was not clear in what capacity. He owns his own low-budget team, but said in court documents last week that he's had to lay off 10 employees, borrow money from family and sell personal assets to meet his living expenses.

''I want to drive and would love to be there driving,'' he said. ''But obviously it's late in the week. But we'll definitely be there.''

Ownership of the No. 41 Toyota was transferred to his wife, Shana, following his suspension, but she cited financial reasons in not sending the team to the past five races. The team used J.J. Yeley in the first two races following Mayfield's suspension.

Mullen advised the court he would recess after 75 minutes because he had a funeral to attend and said he'd hear NASCAR when he returned.

''What Bill Diehl proved today is that he has a remarkably vivid imagination in terms of what the procedures are,'' Poston said. ''NASCAR followed all its procedures. The samples are pristine, and this afternoon when we have the opportunity to speak to the judge.''

[Michael Cash]

Mayfield's camp is doing a good job of trying to make people think he was smoking meth out of a light bulb.

It really hasn't been mentioned that Adderall and Ritalin are basically meth and if you exceed the recommended dosage the effects are no different.

Can't help but think this is good for NASCAR though. With the auto biz in the shitter they are getting a lot free publicity out of this.

They may have to revise their policy because of this but they will certainly be heralded for really having the only real zero tolerance policy in sports.

[clevfan]

Drivers react to Mayfield's reinstatement

By MARK LONG – 1 hour ago

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Bump-drafting, slingshot passing and restrictor-plate racing weren't the buzzwords being thrown around Daytona International Speedway on Thursday.

There was way more talk about affidavits, B samples, false positives and a judge's temporary injunction that reinstated suspended NASCAR owner-driver Jeremy Mayfield.

A federal judge in Charlotte, N.C., lifted Mayfield's indefinite suspension Wednesday, allowing him to race at Daytona this weekend.

"The situation that we had, when somebody tests positive, is something to be seriously considered, and there's a lot of responsibility that goes along with that," driver Ryan Newman said. "People make mistakes. I hope the judge didn't make one."

Mayfield missed the deadline to enter his No. 41 Toyota into Saturday night's race. He still could drive for another team, although no owners seemed ready to offer him a ride.

"Everybody out here wants to race, and they want to race hard and race with people that are in the same state of mind that you're in," former teammate Kasey Kahne said. "If people are into other things, they should go do those things by themselves and not be on a race track going 200 mph with other racers."

Mayfield failed a random drug test May 1 and was suspended eight days later. Outside court Wednesday, NASCAR said Mayfield had tested positive for methamphetamines. But in an affidavit filed last week, Mayfield denied ever using the illegal drug. He has blamed the positive test on the combination of Adderall, prescribed for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Claritin-D, used to fight allergies.

NASCAR attorney Paul Hendrick argued that the "massive amounts" of methamphetamines in Mayfield's sample suggest his defense was "simply not true." But U.S. District Court Judge Graham Mullen ruled in Mayfield's favor, saying the likelihood of a false positive was "quite substantial."

That decision shocked many in the sport.

"Either Jeremy or NASCAR is wrong, and I don't know which one, but whichever one is wrong is really hurting the other," said veteran Mark Martin, adding that his biggest concern is that NASCAR doesn't have the final say in who can and can't drive.

Three-time defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson was simply baffled by the whole mess.

"I don't even know where to start because you hear one rumor that it's one way and another that it's another way," Johnson said. "Now, next thing you know, there's a chance for him to come back to the racetrack and makes you believe maybe there's something wrong with the system and then you hear the rumors. It's just a confusing mess right now. I look forward to the day that it's all laid out plain and simple."

For some it already is.

"If he's out there on the race track with me, it doesn't bother me," Kyle Busch said. "Normally, we're ahead of him anyway."

Kahne, too, took a shot at Mayfield.

"As far as racing with Jeremy, I don't ever race with Jeremy," Kahne said. "He's at one end; I'm at the other."

Even so, some drivers have expressed concerns about even being on the same track.

Johnson and four-time Cup champ Jeff Gordon both signed affidavits, part of a recent NASCAR court filing, saying they didn't want to be on the same track as someone who tests positive for a banned substance or has drugs in his system.

"It's almost a 'duh' statement when they say they don't want drivers using drugs on the racetrack. Who does?" Mayfield's attorney, Bill Diehl, said in court.

The two former champs are among those having a hard time keeping track of all the developments.

"I'm so confused right now at the whole thing that I'm going to let it all play out," Gordon said. "I haven't been following it enough to know what's going on, so leave me out of it. I support NASCAR in what they're wanting to do and what they're trying to do with the drug policy. I think it's the right thing to do."

Added Johnson: "We just want people on the track that are sober and not under the influence of anything. ... If he passes the test, then put him back on the track. It's hard to know with all that's gone on over last few months what is what. It's just getting more confusing as every day unfolds."

Jeff Burton had a better feel for the details.

"Ultimately, unless there is some agreement prior to that, it will eventually go to trial and that decision of that trial will be huge," Burton said.

Until then, Burton would like to see Mayfield tested as often as possible.

"The fact of the matter is that he failed a drug test, and that opens the door to question," Burton said. "I deserve to 100 percent know that he is 100 percent clean and so he should be tested soon enough, early enough, often enough to where he can never be on the race track while he is using drugs."

[clevfan]

Mayfield saga gets uglier, but I believe him

Posted by Jeff Wolf
Thursday, Jul. 16, 2009 at 03:26 PM
lvrj.com

Call me a fool — and you won’t be the first if you do — but I’m standing behind Jeremy Mayfield.

I couldn’t believe he used methamphetamines when he allegedly failed a test in May, and no one can be so stupid as to use the drug — or any other banned substance — while fighting to prove you never had used it in the first place.

On Wednesday, NASCAR said he failed another drug test taken on July 6 that showed positive for meth.

However, later that night, Mayfield’s attorney, John Buric, said a urine sample taken less than an hour after NASCAR’s July 6 test was analyzed by the drug-screening laboratory LabCorp and it showed a negative result for methamphetamines.

NASCAR included the results in a motion Wednesday afternoon in federal court to try to get Mayfield’s suspension reinstated after a federal court judge granted Mayfield a preliminary injunction on July 1 so he could return to racing.

An even more shocking claim was made in NASCAR’s motion when it presented a sworn affidavit from Lisa Mayfield — Jeremy's stepmother — in which she contends that over a seven-year period beginning in 1998 she saw him snort methamphetamine “at least 30 times” and that he "cooked some of his own" meth before starting to buy it.

Lying in a federal affidavit is perjury and a felony, so why would she lie?

Mayfield offered a reason — a stunning one — during an interview on Sirius satellite radio late Wednesday. He claims she shot and killed his father two years ago.

“That was a lady who was married to my dad who is very, very angry at me. And that's all going to come out, too. It's a whole different subject. A lady who pretty much shot and killed my dad (in 2007) ...” he told Sirius “Late Shift” hosts Buddy Baker and Nate Ryan of USA Today.

Mayfield's father, Terry, was 56 when he died from a gunshot wound to the chest in what the Chapel Hill, N.C., medical examiner called a self-inflicted gunshot wound. There was no sign of criminal activity or foul play, according to the sheriff's report.

Lisa Mayfield testified he had been depressed.

“She's a very evil lady and obviously can be bought, and her time's coming,” Mayfield said. “And it's definitely somebody that doesn't like me whatsoever and doesn't deserve to even have the Mayfield last name. ... I damn sure won't call her a stepmom, I tell you that. She never was."

OK, then. There’s more.

"She's basically a whore," he told ESPN.com. "She shot and killed my dad."

In that interview, Mayfield promised she would be served with a wrongful death lawsuit today (Thursday).

"She knows what we've got on her," Mayfield told ESPN.com. "For her to come out and do this is pretty ballsy.

“Everybody that's ever known me knows I never, ever have been around her for more than 10 hours of my life,” he said.

And we thought Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his stepmom, Teresa, had differences.

NASCAR suspended Mayfield on May 9 for allegedly testing positive for meth in a test administered on May 1. Mayfield blamed his positive test on the combined use of Adderall for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Claritin-D for allergies.

On July 1, federal judge Graham C. Mullen granted Mayfield a preliminary injunction so that he could return to racing as early as three days later at Daytona International Speedway.

Mayfield didn’t show up for that race, hasn’t entered one since and likely won’t considering the last member of his Mayfield Motorsports operation resigned hours before the latest revelations surfaced Wednesday.

Bobby Wooten, general manager of the first-year team, told The Associated Press his resignation had nothing to do with Mayfield's ongoing battle with NASCAR over the first failed drug test. He left because he believed Mayfield’s team would never return to a track and Mayfield was preparing to sell its assets.

The nine-year veteran of a North Carolina police department steadfastly defended Mayfield against the drug-use allegations.

"I think Jeremy is telling the truth. I back him 110 percent," Wooten said. "I don't believe Jeremy is a drug addict. I do believe he could have taken one too many over-the-counter drugs, and now this situation has popped up. ... I have never seen Jeremy under that pretense. And he was around us four and five days a week, 12 hours a day. Typically, if you are an abuser of this particular drug, you can't go without it for that long of a time. I did not ever see that in Jeremy."

Wooten said he knows from his time in law enforcement that drug users are capable of hiding the abuse and fooling those around them. But he said since his February hiring, he never suspected Mayfield of being under the influence of an illegal drug.

He testified to that in a sworn affidavit that Mullen took in to consideration when he lifted Mayfield's suspension.

This story will not have a happy ending for any of the parties.

Had Mayfield accepted NASCAR’s findings — whether innocent or guilty — and entered a rehab program he might have been back racing next year.

But he decided to fight.

And this fight has no end in sight.

I’ll only convict him when NASCAR proves his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and now I have doubt.

This is, after all, what NASCAR champions: It’s the American way.

[clevfan]

You know, I told my son this morning that I thought Mayfield was being framed....

[Michael Cash]

Problem with that is is why? He sucks, he wasn't even getting media coverage at the track before this all went down. Why even bother with him?

I don't know man, my mind is spinning on all this now. I was sure the Adderall was the cause for this but now I am back at square one as to where I stand.

[clevfan]

July 21, 2009

Behind a Court Battle Over Mayfield’s Suspension, Questions on Nascar’s Drug Policy

By MIKE TIERNEY
NY TIMES

Nascar lagged well behind other American professional sports in establishing a formal drug testing program. Only this year, prompted in part by a truck series driver’s heroin use, did the auto racing authority begin testing all drivers and crew members.

Even before its season-opening Daytona 500 Sprint Cup race, Nascar started naming names of those attached to positive tests, and it has suspended eight crew members so far. But it was not until May that there was a drug-related suspension of a driver — Jeremy Mayfield, a 17-year veteran with five career wins in the top-tier Cup series.

The case has become like a multicar pileup at the speedway; you can’t take your eyes off it.

The increasingly salacious elements of the story and the stigma of the drug commonly referred to as crystal meth have dominated the news and taken the focus away from Nascar’s program, which many specialists in the field of drug testing have derided as less than ideal.

While applauding the intent, they say the plan lacks a full and specific list of disallowed drugs, fails to establish precise penalties, does not have a formal medical exception standard and is without a clearly established appeals or arbitration process.

Many of those elements are playing out in the Mayfield case.

Known in Nascar circles more for his outspokenness than racing success, Mayfield, 40, sued the organization in May after he was suspended for failing a drug test. Nascar, which by practice does not disclose the exact drug detected, countersued. Mayfield sought a temporary injunction to restore his driving privileges, his lawyers arguing in court that he never used recreational drugs.

On July 1, a judge determined that the chance of a false positive was “quite substantial” and ruled in Mayfield’s favor, lifting the suspension. That day, Nascar confirmed published reports that Mayfield had tested positive for methamphetamine.

The case became messier last week when Nascar said that Mayfield, who had offered to be retested, had failed a second test for meth. Among the new result and other papers filed by Nascar to persuade the court to lift the injunction was testimony from Mayfield’s stepmother that she had observed him ingesting the drug some 30 times over seven years.

In an interview with ESPN, Mayfield cast his stepmother as the person who “shot and killed my dad.” (His father’s shooting death in 2007 was ruled by a medical examiner as self-inflicted.)

Mayfield and his lawyers contend that the two positive tests may have been caused not by meth but by his use of Adderall for attention deficit disorder and Claritin-D for allergies. He said about a half-dozen of his urine samples had been evaluated by an independent lab and showed no traces of meth.

Nascar stands by its open-ended suspension of Mayfield.

“What we’ve been told is methamphetamine is America’s No. 1 drug problem,” said Ramsey Poston, a Nascar spokesman. “It’s highly addictive and dangerous.”

Nascar was founded 52 years ago by Bill France Sr., and the France family has operated the business unilaterally ever since. No drivers’ union exists to negotiate through collective bargaining drug detection methods and penalties.

For two decades, while other pro sports leagues as well as the N.C.A.A. and the United States Olympic Committee were developing and fine-tuning testing programs, Nascar simply declared that the misuse and abuse of any drug constituted a violation. Testing was initiated only by “reasonable suspicion.” The approach was sufficient to ensnare some drivers.

But after Aaron Fike of the truck series was arrested in July 2007 with heroin and then disclosed to ESPN the Magazine in April 2008 that he had taken the drug before a race, Nascar adopted testing measures more in line with other sports, with a few exceptions. Last year, it announced that all drivers, crew members and officials would submit to preseason baseline tests, followed by random screenings throughout the race schedule. According to Poston, all drivers will be tested three to five times a year.

“It’s a broad, sweeping policy that makes it the best policy in sports,” Poston said in a telephone interview.

Yet several drug testing experts interviewed for this article found fault with various aspects of the program. Nascar provides its teams with a minimal list of banned substances largely by categories — amphetamines, barbiturates — instead of identifying each prohibited drug. Some experts have urged Nascar to spell out more exacting penalties for violations, which so far have been open-ended and indefinite in length, and to more formally accommodate exceptions on drugs for therapy.

According to Don Catlin, the founder of the U.C.L.A. Olympic Analytical Lab, Nascar should recognize that “there are drugs that go both ways — for nefarious purposes and for a therapeutic use.”

Poston says waivers for forbidden drugs are granted for necessary medicinal purposes. David Black, a forensic toxicologist, administers Nascar’s testing program through his lab, Aegis in Nashville. “They just need to be in touch with Dr. Black and they work it out,” Poston said.

Gary Wadler of the New York University School of Medicine, who helped compile the roster of prohibited drugs for the World Anti-Doping Agency, said he considered Nascar’s program “woefully adequate.” He said Major League Baseball and the N.F.L. “are light years ahead of where I believe Nascar is.”

Not having a defined list of banned substances renders the program “inherently unfair,” said Charles Yesalis, a Penn State professor of health policy and a longtime adviser on drug policy to sports organizations.

Because sports leagues have a financial incentive not to sideline stars, Yesalis said third-party administering of testing provided more integrity to the process.

Mayfield’s lawyer Bill Diehl accused Nascar of singling out his client, a midlevel driver on the Sprint Cup circuit who has not won a race since 2005. “It’s all contrived, made up,” Diehl said.

In a motion filed Monday in United States District Court in Charlotte, N.C., Mayfield’s lawyers contended Judge Graham Mullen properly ruled when he granted the injunction July 1.

Even if the court allows Mayfield to continue racing, the legal victory may prove Pyrrhic. The driving team that he owned has collapsed, sponsorship money has dried up and his career is in shambles.

[nino brown]

as much as these guys travel and drive....seems like all of them would be on ritalin, adderall, or some heavy duty meth