I’m sick and tired of reading about scholarship football and basketball players getting arrested and charged with drug violations. In fact, I think it’s time the Kentucky State Police – or the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation in the state Attorney General’s office – launched an investigation of drug usage in all our state’s athletics programs.

I don’t know if what we’ve learned so far constitutes an epidemic, but there sure seems to be a problem, especially at Kentucky and Louisville, our state’s highest-profile institutions.

The Cards seem to have more violators, but the Cats have the most visible one so far – Curtis Pulley, who was scheduled to be the starting quarterback until it became know that he has been arrested twice this summer, once for possession of marijuana.

Where are these guys getting this stuff? How are they paying for it? How many more players are involved who have escaped detection? And what does the arrest of Pulley and others say about the testing and oversight policies currently in effect?

Please understand two things.

First, I’m not picking on UK and U of L. They just happen to be the programs about which most Kentuckians care. But it’s a national problem. In today’s local local Gannett Profit Center, otherwise known as the Courier-Journal, I see that one of Bobby Petrino’s Arkansas players faces misdemeanor drug and gun charges.

According to the story, defensive tackle Ernest Mitchell was “pulled over in Forrest City on June 30, and an officer found a small-caliber gun, drug paraphernalia, and what was believed to be a small amount of marijuana in his car. Mitchell wasn’t arrested but was giving a citation and allowed to leave.”

How about that Arkansas justice? Can you imagine the conversation between the cop and the big Hog?

Cop: “Well, golllleeee. If it ain’t Ernest Mitchell. Nice gun you got there, Ernest?”
Hog: “Thanks, officer.”
Cop: “And what else do we have here? Well, gollllleee. Danged if it ain’t some of that there drug par-uh-pha-nalya and some of that evil weed. Now what’s a big ol’ tackle lack you doin’ with that stuff, Ernest?”
Hog: “Would you believe I need it for an allergy?”
Cop: “Yessir, I would. But I got to give you a ticket. I’m sorry about that, Ernest. Now you just take your gun and par-uh-pha-nalya and get on along. By the way, you gonna beat LSU this year, ain’t cha?”
Hog: “Yessir.”
Cop: “Thattaboy. Woo pig, sooey.”

This incident raises an interesting question about Bobby Petrino, the Arkansas coach who apparently left his successor at U of L, Steve Kragthorpe, with some bad apples in the barrel. Do drug problems just follow Petrino wherever he goes? Or were they there before he arrived and, if so, what’s he going to do about them, other than try to cover them up?

The second thing you should understand is that I believe Gatewood Galbraith, perennial candidate for Governor and other state offices, may have had a point in saying that marijuana should be legalized.

It seems a bit hypocritical to legalize alcohol and not marijuana. They have the same capacity to impair and alter consciousness. Why is one legal and the other not? Besides, legalizing marijuana would give Kentucky farmers a new cash crop, provide state government with a new source of tax revenue, and help alleviate the burdens on our court system and prison population.

But that’s an argument for another day. As long as marijuana is illegal, athletes must abide by the same laws as everyone else. They also should suffer the same legal consequences. The quarterback caught with pot should be treated no differently than, say, a tuba player in the band or a copy editor for the student newspaper.

What I don’t get about these athletes is that they have a support system that the average student doesn’t have. They have coaches, tutors, peers, and monitors to check on their behavior. Yet they still find ways to do drugs. They are every bit as determined to beat the system as they are to beat each other on the field.

Since the schools obviously are not doing a good job of policing themselves, it’s time to let the real police take over.

Scholarship athletes are getting free rides at a time when other students are scraping together every nickel and dime to meet the unconscionable cost of tuition. Scholarship athletes have a unique obligation to the people who support them by buying tickets.

I don’t believe that UK Coach Rich Brooks or U of L’s Kragthorpe has their head in the sand. I believe both want to rid their teams of drugs and the people who use them. But somewhere, somehow, the system is breaking down.
So let’s turn the matter – has it reached crisis proportions yet? — over to the Kentucky State Police or the Attorney General. Give them all the tools they need to clean up our state’s college athletics program. If administrators need to be fired or players dismissed, so be it.

Enough is enough. Let’s put Kentucky on the cutting edge of reform instead of the last to get on board.