Louisiana commission goes back to old rules for 2 drugs

Facing widespread pressure to do an about face, the Louisiana State Racing Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to maintain tighter restrictions on two controversial medications that would have been under much looser rules come Saturday.

By a vote of 10-0 with two members absent, the commission decided in a 17-minute emergency meeting to keep the withdrawal time on the bronchial drug clenbuterol at 14 days and on the pain-relieving, anti-inflammatory steroid Depo-Medrol at 21 days. The rule change that was rescinded Tuesday would have allowed horses to race only three days after being given clenbuterol and seven days after getting Depo-Medrol.

For those two drugs, commission chairperson Eddie Koehl said that Tuesday’s vote would maintain the existing rules for at least the next three months of what has been called an emergency period.

“We’re going to go back and look into research in conjunction with (the Association of Racing Commissioners International) and their scientists to make sure we get to the best answer for equine safety,” Koehl said during the meeting conducted on Zoom.

The announcement last week that Louisiana racing was about to reduce withdrawal periods for the two drugs led to a wave of criticism from horsemen pushing for safer standards. Racing administrators around the country also said they were worried horses being shipped from Louisiana to their tracks could have an unfair competitive advantage and be more prone to suffer serious injuries.

With rules still becoming more lenient this weekend for dozens of other medications, Koehl said the commission is not completely abandoning the easing of restrictions on clenbuterol and Depo-Medrol.

“We’re not giving up on those,” he said. “During this 90-day first emergency period, we’ll continue to collect data, and we’re going to coalesce with ARCI and their membership and their scientists, including their veterinarians, ... to further the therapeutic medications and to promote the health and safety of our equine and human athletes and participation in Louisiana.”

Veterinarian Larry Findley, a member of the commission, put it more succinctly.

“Clenbuterol is an excellent drug, and we all know it’s an excellent drug,” he said. “But clenbuterol is abused.”

As the owner and operator of Fair Grounds, Louisiana’s biggest racetrack, Churchill Downs Inc. was the most influential opponent of the loosened rules that were just rolled back Tuesday.

“This entire emergency rulemaking process that put us in this position is probably not the right way to go,” CDI attorney Oz Shariff said. “I think that the best way and the best approach for this commission is to re-examine this process through normal rulemaking so that there’s adequate time for public input, comment, review. All the industry stakeholders, a number of which are on this phone call, I think deserve to weigh in on this very, very important issue, particularly as Louisiana starts to deviate from well-recognized and well-understood national standards.”

That was a reference to the overarching path Louisiana has taken to loosen medication regulations. This goes against the federal grain of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, which Louisiana has refused to join and, in fact, is suing to have declared unconstitutional.

When it voted in its more liberal medication rules, the commission pointed to veterinarians in Louisiana who believed the federal regulations were too strident. With dozens of Louisiana state lawmakers also weighing in against the looser rules, another veterinarian on the commission intimated Tuesday that he and his administrative peers were caving to pressure from outside racing and outside the state.

“We’re making decisions, doing what’s politically correct and not necessarily what’s best for the general population of Louisiana resources as a whole,” Dr. Travis Miller said.

Koehl recognized that some trainers preparing for races this weekend might have acted under the looser rules but, with the reversion to the old standards for clenbuterol and Depo-Medrol, might be flagged in post-race testing.

“There’s a period for certain horses for these two medications that we might end up with something outside the old thresholds, and we will consider that accordingly,” Koehl said. “We’re not going to allow gross violations on those two, ... but we will be well aware of what could have happened over the last five days.”

Churchill voiced wider objections to the way Louisiana would handle testing going forward. The commission plans to throw out traditional standards based on milligrams of a medication per kilograms of a horse. Instead, total dosages per animal would be the guideline.

“A 1,200-pound horse has a significantly different volume of distribution than a 900-pound 2-year-old who is making its first start,” CDI equine medical director Dr. Will Farmer said. “Yet both of these horses have the same threshold and receive the same amount of medication in a single dose, which could ultimately set Louisiana horsemen up for a negative analytical finding.”

Farmer also questioned the commission’s decision to allow certain drugs “until breaking from the gate,” but he was told by Koehl that since those rules did not apply to clenbuterol and Depo-Medrol, that discussion would have to wait for another day.