Scandal Joel Smith (Melbourne): Cocaine trafficking accusation

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Trafficking Accusation:

Scandal - Joel Smith (Melbourne): Cocaine trafficking accusation

Trafficking Accusation: https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/joel-smith-melbourne-cocaine-trafficking-accusation.1373812/post-82421629 MFC and AFL Statements: Melbourne Football Club Media Statement – Joel Smith The Melbourne Football Club has been advised by the AFL that further...
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MFC and AFL Statements:

Melbourne Football Club Media Statement – Joel Smith

The Melbourne Football Club has been advised by the AFL that further Anti-Doping Rule Violations have been asserted against Joel Smith by Sport Integrity Australia.

The Melbourne Football Club is not authorised to make public comment while this is an ongoing matter that is being investigated by Sport Integrity Australia.

It should be noted since the article has been published on the Herald Sun website, Joel’s management has contacted the Club on his behalf to advise that the comments made by the source within the article are not reflective of Joel’s views and the source is not speaking on any authority from Joel.

Joel has made it very clear that he has no issues or concerns with anyone at the Melbourne Football Club.

As the Club has previously stated, we will wait for the investigation to be completed before we update our supporters further.

AFL STATEMENT – JOEL SMITH

The AFL confirms that further Anti-Doping Rule Violations (ADRVs) have been asserted against Joel Smith of the Melbourne Football Club under the Australian Football Anti-Doping Code.

Sport Integrity Australia (SIA) has notified Smith that three ADRVs for “Trafficking or Attempted Trafficking” of Cocaine to third parties are asserted against him.

Under the Code, Trafficking in an anti-doping context is relevantly defined to be “Selling, giving, transporting, sending, delivering or distributing a Prohibited Substance, by an Athlete … to any third party [but] shall not include actions involving Prohibited Substances which are not prohibited in Out-of-Competition Testing unless the circumstances as a whole demonstrate such Prohibited Substances are not intended for genuine and legal therapeutic purposes or are intended to enhance sport performance” (Article 1 of the Code).

Further, SIA has notified Smith that an ADRV for Possession of a Prohibited Substance (Cocaine) on 9 September 2022 is asserted against him.

These ADRVs are in addition to that previously asserted against him (in connection with a sample provided by him after the match between Melbourne and Hawthorn on 20 August 2023 which tested positive to Cocaine and its metabolite, Benzoylecgonine).

Smith will continue to be provisionally suspended pending the finalisation of all of these matters, meaning he is not permitted to be part of Melbourne’s football program, including Melbourne’s pre-season training that is currently underway.

Under the Code, the new asserted ADRVs will be further investigated by SIA and these matters may ultimately be heard by an AFL Anti-Doping Tribunal in the coming months.

Due to the ongoing nature of the anti-doping process, the AFL and SIA are unable to make any further comment at this time.
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ThirtyFive said:
As it was a SIA (Sport Integrity Australia) positive competition adverse finding that escalated into trafficking once SIA's investigators did their work, it was out of the AFL's hands. There's no broom big enough or rugs in the SIA CEO office. And, as we've seen, they won't hesitate to dump concrete on athletes. No wet lettuce leaves in their arsenal....
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It occurs to me that the identities of the other players in Joel Smith's group chat could possibly be deduced from SIA test statistics. Even lacking corroborating evidence, being mentioned in such a chat would certainly justify elevated rates of surveillance.

USADA publishes test history on a per-athlete basis, as does World Aquatics. Mysteriously, it appears that Sports Integrity Australia, following in the footsteps of China's anti-doping agency, chooses not to make this information available.
 

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How can the AFL be taken seriously, unless they fully investigate the Melbourne drug situation? I do not blame Smiths dad for saying what he did about his son's drug addiction. That his son was drug-free before he joined the club and picked it up because of the culture there.

In a statement handed to federal MP Andrew Wilkie earlier this year – assessed by SIA – former Demons doctor Zeeshan Arain estimated two thirds of the club’s squad were either “frequent” drug users or “occasionally” used illicit drugs.
Mr Wilkie also exposed a secret “off the books” illicit drug testing regime operating within the AFL, which helps players evade detection for breaches of the world anti-doping code.

How can the AFL ignore this? It's time for the AFL to get real and make its guidelines transparent. If they are going to police it do so.
 
gogeelongcats said:
How can the AFL be taken seriously, unless they fully investigate the Melbourne drug situation? I do not blame Smiths dad for saying what he did about his son's drug addiction. That his son was drug-free before he joined the club and picked it up because of the culture there.

In a statement handed to federal MP Andrew Wilkie earlier this year – assessed by SIA – former Demons doctor Zeeshan Arain estimated two thirds of the club’s squad were either “frequent” drug users or “occasionally” used illicit drugs.
Mr Wilkie also exposed a secret “off the books” illicit drug testing regime operating within the AFL, which helps players evade detection for breaches of the world anti-doping code.

How can the AFL ignore this? It's time for the AFL to get real and make its guidelines transparent. If they are going to police it do so.
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The club threw the former Dr and President under the bus as they spoke up about it. They even wanted to test staff. I wonder who they were trying to catch?
 
gogeelongcats said:
How can the AFL be taken seriously, unless they fully investigate the Melbourne drug situation? I do not blame Smiths dad for saying what he did about his son's drug addiction. That his son was drug-free before he joined the club and picked it up because of the culture there.

In a statement handed to federal MP Andrew Wilkie earlier this year – assessed by SIA – former Demons doctor Zeeshan Arain estimated two thirds of the club’s squad were either “frequent” drug users or “occasionally” used illicit drugs.
Mr Wilkie also exposed a secret “off the books” illicit drug testing regime operating within the AFL, which helps players evade detection for breaches of the world anti-doping code.

How can the AFL ignore this? It's time for the AFL to get real and make its guidelines transparent. If they are going to police it do so.
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The AFL know the game has a drug problem, but they won't admit for fear of damaging the AFL brand and that's why they brought in the 3 strike rule to try and hide it.
 
gogeelongcats said:
How can the AFL be taken seriously, unless they fully investigate the Melbourne drug situation? I do not blame Smiths dad for saying what he did about his son's drug addiction. That his son was drug-free before he joined the club and picked it up because of the culture there.

In a statement handed to federal MP Andrew Wilkie earlier this year – assessed by SIA – former Demons doctor Zeeshan Arain estimated two thirds of the club’s squad were either “frequent” drug users or “occasionally” used illicit drugs.
Mr Wilkie also exposed a secret “off the books” illicit drug testing regime operating within the AFL, which helps players evade detection for breaches of the world anti-doping code.

How can the AFL ignore this? It's time for the AFL to get real and make its guidelines transparent. If they are going to police it do so.
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Joel was 19 when he joined the club.

“Man in his 20s starts to use illicit drugs” is not the drama filled headline you think it is.
 

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HTPunter said:
Additionally, he’s not the first dad to not know everything about his sons drug use. Maybe Joel was the leader of the drug taking culture considering he was the one texting to offer it around
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100% the whole saga is just a snapshot into society overall for people in that late teen age bracket and anyone thinking it’s only an issue at Melbourne are completely naive

I’m not really one to say it’s an AFL problem either because doing so neglects to acknowledge how wide spread recreational drug use actually is in society
 
Muddiemoose said:
100% the whole saga is just a snapshot into society overall for people in that late teen age bracket and anyone thinking it’s only an issue at Melbourne are completely naive

I’m not really one to say it’s an AFL problem either because doing so neglects to acknowledge how wide spread recreational drug use actually is in society
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The problem is the AFL tries to hide the problem
 
Aussie in exile said:
The problem is the AFL tries to hide the problem
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Don’t even know if it’s necessarily the AFL they are stuck between a rock and a hard place because they have a legal duty of care to protect the players welfare and all it takes for a player to cite any recreational drug use as a mental health issue it becomes a legal minefield if the league starts naming players

It’s obvious the current system isn’t working but as to how they can go about addressing it I have nfi
 
Muddiemoose said:
Don’t even know if it’s necessarily the AFL they are stuck between a rock and a hard place because they have a legal duty of care to protect the players welfare and all it takes for a player to cite any recreational drug use as a mental health issue it becomes a legal minefield if the league starts naming players

It’s obvious the current system isn’t working but as to how they can go about addressing it I have nfi
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Saying you have a mental health issue when you have a drug problem is like a get out of jail card.
Other sports name people who have tested positive for drugs. Perhaps the AFL have kidded themselves that the problem will go away, but as we both know it wont
 
Aussie in exile said:
Saying you have a mental health issue when you have a drug problem is like a get out of jail card.
Other sports name people who have tested positive for drugs. Perhaps the AFL have kidded themselves that the problem will go away, but as we both know it wont
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Don’t think the AFL’s policy is any different to any other sporting code at least in Australia
 
Aussie in exile said:
In Australia yes, worldwide no.
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well yeah, for one the big 4 leagues in the US have their own performance enhancing drug polices that are completely separate from WADA, so it's obviously going to be very different to Australian sporting codes. That then allows those sports to go about things in a different way. Cannabis for example is basically tolerated by the big 4 leagues but would net bans here.

Codes that do fall under the WADA policy may have their own versions of the illicit drugs policy which, to my understanding, are likely to value protecting privacy for initial tests. for example, the english cricket board basically has their own version of the three strikes policy which saw a County player get a 12 month ban after their third positive test years ago and his name was not published after the first or second tests. The FA does something similar too (albeit this is an older PDF). inews makes the claim in this piece that they have data that suggests 10 players were in breach of this policy between 2019 to 2021. Those names are not published to my knowledge. Australian sporting codes seem to be on the same wavelength as our peers in the UK.


Personally I don't like this ban at all. One on hand, WADA have been very clear in it's intent to handle illicit drugs differently, by changing the rules from 2021 to allow for ~month~ bans instead of four year bans for positive match day tests. But on the other, it doesn't seem that WADA actually made any changes to the 'trafficking' part of the code. So even though Joel Smith was obviously not offering cocaine to team-mates in a bid to do engage in some performance enhancing behaviour, they may not be much avenue for a reduction in length. This seems to me to be something in need of correction so that WADA is in alignment with their own intents. With that said, I note that in SIA's statement, two of the three trafficking charges are for dates from 2021 onwards (when the new code came in) with very small date windows, 3 and 6 days respectively. But the 2020 charge, which presumably would fall under the older stricter code? A 5 month window. That's interesting, to me anyway. https://www.sportintegrity.gov.au/n...-updates/2024-11/afl-player-receives-sanction. The obvious read of that info, for me, is SIA trying their best to build a pre-2021 case so no reduction is possible
 
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HTPunter said:
Joel was 19 when he joined the club.

“Man in his 20s starts to use illicit drugs” is not the drama filled headline you think it is.
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I agree, but I think the inference from Shaun Smith is to look at who is being protected. Smith deserves his sentence, but he is very much the scapegoat. Doesn't take a genius to narrow down the other players mentioned in the SMS (one of course is very obvious).
 

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Scandal Joel Smith (Melbourne): Cocaine trafficking accusation

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