Peter Corrigan: Innocent at risk in age of drug innuendo

This week will see the publication of UK Sport's annual doping figures. I have no idea what they will reveal, but the merest whiff of a failed test or two will bring the baying hounds bounding out of their kennels and we will be treated to the usual sanctimonious outrage from anti-drugs-in-sport crusaders, their armour glinting as they sit aside their pawing white steeds.

We had a taste last week when the wretched Chelsea goalkeeper Mark Bosnich was dragged before the beaks for testing positive for cocaine. He was found guilty of improper conduct, banned for nine months and ordered to pay £10,000 costs.

Bosnich, who claims his drink was spiked by a girl he met in a night club, says he will appeal. As it stands, his ban will date back to December when he received a temporary worldwide suspension. He was also bombed out by Chelsea, who cancelled his contract.

He is free to resume his career on 23 September if anyone will have him. I would have thought all that was punishment enough, but no. Here comes Minister for Sport Richard Caborn – a white steed man if I ever saw one – slamming the Football Association for their leniency.

Surely, this has nothing to do with impressing the International Olympic Committee before whom Caborn and others will be prostrating themselves if London are allowed to proceed with their Olympic Games 2012 bid? I've never taken a drug in my life – unless you count the couple of Vick's inhalers I'm fond of on a Saturday night – so I know nothing about the powers of cocaine. Therefore, I am bound to ask if it can make you a better goalkeeper, because if it can I would like to recommend one or two British keepers to have it prescribed on the NHS.

But so many of these cases involve substances whose helpful properties are so vague. Alain Baxter, the British skier who won a bronze medal in the Winter Games last year, had the medal stripped from him for a "drug" they admitted entered his body via an over-the-counter inhaler.

Denise Lewis, one of our most brilliant athletes, has been blasted for having a coach who has a previous involvement in a drugs "scandal". Immediately, she is scarred by suspicion.

Back in the Eighties when I was arguing for more tolerance in this direction, Carl Lewis was the epitome of a pure athlete. I never warmed to him myself. Anyone who is convinced God is propelling him is under the influence of the most dangerous drug of all. Ten days ago, it was revealed that Lewis had failed three drug tests before the infamous 1988 Olympic Games, when he came a bitterly complaining second to the "drug fiend" Ben Johnson. The news that Lewis had a drug past of his own led him to be promptly crucified by some of those who had elevated him to deity status.

They moderated their tone when it was revealed that the stimulants had been taken inadvertently, but don't they all say that? The truth is that this is sport's most unlevel playing field. We have lost touch with what's allowable and what's not. If we have so much energy and money to spend on this problem, wouldn't it be better employed on stepping back and taken a fresh, objective look at the subject?

Over 15 years ago, when I was advocating a less hysterical approach to drugs in sport I quoted several medical experts who claimed that the drug rules were so arbitrary and pharmacologically unsound they increased unfairness in sport rather than decreased it.

No one paid any notice and where is the battle against drugs? Back where it started. All that has been created is a culture of suspicion that stains the innocent, the gullible and the guilty alike. When there are far more enlightened ways of tackling the drugs problem, why do they persist in witch-hunts that will eventually destroy the sports they think they are helping?

Uefa should have shut the doors

The Football Association let loose a sigh of relief on Thursday when Uefa decided to impose no more than a £75,000 fine for the crowd troubles that infested England's game against Turkey at Sunderland but, in the long run, they may wish they'd received a much sterner punishment.

They were fearing they'd have to play their next match behind closed doors to atone for the violence, racism and pitch invasions that soured the Turkey match and many of us regret Uefa didn't choose that option instead of a meaningless fine.

England's captain David Beckham was brave and honest enough to acknowledge that playing in an empty stadium was not an unacceptable penalty to pay. Although it would have cost the FA up to £2m in lost revenue it might have carried enough bonehead penetration power to hammer home a lesson.

Now the FA are left dreading that the next demonic demonstration by England fans will lead to the far more drastic and financially ruinous fate of expulsion from the European Championship.

The FA will be aware of this but will the fans? Expulsion was threatened during Euro 2000 and nothing happened. A pussy-footing fine won't convince them of Uefa's draconian intentions and you can put large amounts of money on some sort of violent misbehaviour between now and Portugal. Had Uefa slapped a closed-doors order on England for the tie against Slovakia in June and warned that any further transgression would result in expulsion from Euro 2004 the message would have been loud and hard, and might even have made a difference.

Part of Uefa's reasoning for their clemency was that the FA had done more than any governing body to combat racism. I must have missed that. Perhaps it has been the opposition supporters booing their own national anthem all these years. And what have the vast backlog of crimes by England supporters around Europe been caused by if not the racial superiority felt by gangs of our brave boys strutting through foreign streets?

It may be an appropriate time to remind ourselves that racism in British sport is neither new nor confined to the yobs. I had the pleasure to be in Cardiff City Hall last weekend when the rugby league legend Billy Boston was honoured at the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame dinner.

When Boston was a teenager he was told that his chances of playing for Cardiff RFC were slim because there were grounds in England at which he would not be welcome. So he joined Wigan in 1954 and it is a measure of how good he was that after just six games he was chosen for Great Britain on their tour of Australia where he scored a record 36 tries in 18 matches. He went on to score 571 tries in the first-class game, more than any Briton has ever done. It was a path that more than a few young coloured players from Cardiff felt obliged to follow and all with distinction. Last weekend, Boston was voted the finest Welsh rugby league player of all time – a most fitting honour for him to receive in his home city.

There are so many other desperately sad stories that show how British sport has lived with racism for a long, long time. At least, it is now out in the open.