An open letter to NASCAR

Listen up, NASCAR. I think it’s time we sat down and had a talk.

I know that it’s an odd… Listen up, NASCAR. I think it’s time we sat down and had a talk.

I know that it’s an odd time in your development. You’re getting a lot of attention, especially from the South, and that’s great.

I’m really proud of you, really. You’ve become arguably the most popular sport in the entire country, which is also great.

What I really called you here to say is, there are going to be certain people, horrible people, out on the road, and I want you to steer clear of them.

These are the types of thugs who have completely ruined baseball, basketball and football.

Thugs like driver Aaron Fike.

Last week in an interview with ESPN, Fike said that he had used heroin multiple times over the course of a week, including on race days.

Heroin, NASCAR, heroin.

Now, I’ve had some issues with you before, NASCAR, but I always turned my head at them.

I was very skeptical when you first started and said you wanted every race to feature only left turns. Personally, it seemed a bit side-ist to me, but I was willing to let that one slide.

And your name, NASCAR. I was completely against using such a long acronym. Look at all the other leagues: MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, WTA, MLS, etc. Even the shortened version of etcetera is only three letters. So when you started up with six letters, I wasn’t so sure it was going to work out.

But those were minor negatives to me.

Now we’re talking about drugs, and not little dinky drugs like, say, steroids. This is heroin. And it’s being used by someone driving a car at upwards of 150 mph. Heroin, and a car going really fast: That’s not a good combination.

Well, that last paragraph isn’t totally truthful. Fike was in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. So he was driving a truck more than 150 mph while on heroin. My deepest apology for the mistake.

And I know you can’t keep track of every single competitor under the NASCAR name, and you certainly can’t control all of them. So occasionally people are going to do illegal things. It’s just up to you to catch them early enough to make sure whatever they’re doing doesn’t escalate into a larger problem for them and for others.

Well, you didn’t do that with Fike. No, he wasn’t caught by NASCAR because of a drug test. He was caught by the police.

According to ESPN, Fike and his fiancee, Cassandra Davidson, were arrested in the parking lot of an amusement park outside of Cincinnati on July 7, 2007.

A police officer wanted to check out the trunk of Fike’s Toyota SUV because there was a black tarp covering up the entire thing so nobody could see what was inside it.

In the trunk they found bloody napkins, heroin and a 100-count box of syringes. And how is it possible that Fike passed drug testing to the point where he said he raced high on heroin?

NASCAR tests based on “reasonable suspicion,” meaning it only tests if an official, a crew member or another driver hears or sees something he thinks needs to be investigated.

So then someone with a seemingly major drug problem should be somewhat of a noticeable thing to recognize, especially for people working around the user, right?

“I had no idea,” Tom DeLoach, co-owner and general manager of Red Horse Racing, who fielded Fike’s No. 1 Toyota Tundra, told ESPN. “None of us did. Not those of us that worked beside him every weekend or, to the best of my knowledge, any of the people that we race against every weekend.”

Hmm, well that’s no good.

Now, I’m not blaming you, NASCAR, for letting Fike’s problem get to the point where he was using before racing a truck faster than 150 mph.

But then again, I’m not Tyler Walker.

Walker is another competitor in the Craftsman Truck Series. On May 18, 2007, NASCAR suspended Walker for failing a drug test.

Last week Walker told ESPN that he not only feels that NASCAR needs a stricter drug-testing policy, but that if such a policy was in place, then he would’ve cleaned himself up much earlier.

“I would love to see a stricter policy,” he told ESPN.

“I’d like to see everybody getting tested so there’s no ifs, ands or buts.

“All my life pretty much, I had done drugs and struggled with addiction. Until my publicity and all that happened with NASCAR, I didn’t really take it seriously. I never really got in trouble. I just had a good time.”

So you see, NASCAR, as popular as you might be right now, you can’t let these things go on. It might be cool to be the sport that allows its athletes compete high, but it’s quite dangerous. You really do need a much stricter, or at least a regulated, drug-testing policy.

And if you don’t do it, I might just have to call in Congress to help clean this up.