Florida’s greyhound racing biz now a pharmaceutical free-for-all

Florida’s racing greyhounds are more or less clear to do as much cocaine as they want, after a court ruled that the state’s drug testing procedures were unlawful.

Late last week, Administrative Law Judge Lawrence P. Stevenson issued a ruling upholding a challenge brought by two dog trainers whose licenses were suspended by the state’s Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering for allegedly supplying dogs with banned stimulants.

The two trainers, Charles McClellan and Natasha Nemeth, were suspended after dogs under their care at an Orange Park racetrack tested positive for cocaine 24 times in a two-year period. They challenged their suspension based on their argument that state regulators had never formally authorized the drug testing rules.

In 2015, a different judge ruled that the state’s 2010 procedures manual’s references to drug testing hadn’t been formally adopted. Regulators copped to the error but claimed that they were no longer circulating the manual to their staff.