Drug-test procedure, results debated by Mayfield and NASCAR

A drug test might seem to be a straightforward matter, but suspended driver/owner Jeremy Mayfield and NASCAR have reached different conclusions about what Mayfield’s urine analysis shows, according to court documents filed Thursday.

Mayfield was tested May 1 and indefinitely suspended May 9 for an alleged positive result under NASCAR’s substance-abuse policy. He filed a lawsuit against NASCAR on May 29 seeking to have his suspension lifted, and NASCAR countersued him June 5. A U.S. District Court judge will hold a hearing Wednesday on Mayfield’s request for an injunction to keep NASCAR from enforcing the suspension.

One of the main issues concerns how the test was conducted and interpreted by Aegis Laboratories, which handles NASCAR’s drug testing.

In an affidavit, Mayfield said he was told by Aegis that he tested positive for methamphetamines, which Mayfield claims is a false positive after he took Claritin-D for allergies and Adderall for attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder.

Mayfield’s experts also say that NASCAR should not have tested Mayfield’s B sample without his consent and that NASCAR should have used an independent laboratory to verify Aegis’ interpretations of the results.

In addition, forensic toxicologist Harry Plotnick, an expert for Mayfield whose consulting business includes providing expert testimony on the issues of sample collection and a laboratory procedure, stated in an affidavit that “a component of Claritin D (pseudoephedrine) has been reported to be converted to methamphetamine” if the inlet port temperature of the instrument used to test the urine happens to be too high.

“It could produce a false positive result for methamphetamine,” Plotnick said.

Plotnick also questioned the results of the A sample where on one page it says that it is a positive result for amphetamines and on another report, a negative for “all amphetamine class[es].”

Mayfield claims NASCAR must follow federal guidelines because its policy states that it uses facilities certified by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. With the first test in question and the second test not following the proper procedure according to the federal agency drug-testing guidelines, the test results should be determined invalid, Mayfield’s legal team argues.

“[NASCAR’s] consistent failures to follow the required protocols under the Drug Testing Guidelines invalidate their purported test results,” Mayfield’s lawyers state in a brief filed Thursday.

So what’s NASCAR’s answer?

First, Dr. David Black, Aegis chairman and president, states in an affidavit filed by NASCAR that the B sample does not need to be tested in an independent laboratory from the A sample “because such a procedure in [sic] not a common practice for sports testing laboratories and testing the B-sample at a different laboratory would delay results and impair the ability of NASCAR to safely administer the sport of stock car racing.”

Black states that the World Anti-Doping Agency requires the same laboratory conducts both tests and that that procedure is consistent with major sports leagues in the United States.

Black also states that Mayfield is misinterpreting the results of the initial test. The page that shows a negative results for all amphetamine classes is “unlikely to detect the presence of [drug name redacted] but will detect the overuse of over-the-counter drugs. … [The testing results] conducted on the Jeremy Mayfield samples are properly reported in the correct portion of the report,” Black said.

Black defends the testing procedures, the chain of custody and also states “sufficient unadulterated samples remain to confirm Aegis’s test results” if needed.

Dr. Doug Aukerman, who is the medical review officer for the NASCAR drug-testing program, rejects a Mayfield claim that he did not ask for the B sample to be tested. “I recorded his request in my verification notes at the time he made the request,” Aukerman states in his affidavit.

Aukerman also states that NASCAR does not have to follow the federal agency drug-testing guidelines, and NASCAR produced an expert who developed the U.S. Department of Transportation’s methodology for random testing under the federal guidelines. The expert, Kenneth Edgell, states that the federal guidelines were intended just for federal agencies and those guidelines “specifically prohibit the testing for the many drugs of concern addressed by the NASCAR Substance Abuse Policy.”

While both sides have produced experts to support their claims, Mayfield will not use his original expert, Harvey MacFenerstein, who issued a news release last week saying that the affidavit filed in the case last month was not the one he thought would be filed and ended up misrepresenting his qualifications. Mayfield attorney John Buric, in an affidavit, said that he made two mistakes – he didn’t delete a sentence indicating MacFenerstein was a medical review officer and he misread MacFenerstein’s handwriting of where he got his medical degree.

Buric thought MacFenerstein wrote CETED, but it actually was CETEC. NASCAR questions the validity of a degree from CETEC, which was a school in the Dominican Republic that has been closed and whose degrees are not recognized by the state of Texas, according to NASCAR.

Mayfield, in his reply to NASCAR’s request that all parts of his complaint originally based on MacFenerstein’s testimony be thrown out, characterizes NASCAR’s investigation into MacFenerstein’s qualifications as “international sleuthing.” While MacFenerstein in his news release said he wasn’t paid for his testimony, Buric, in a May 28 letter to MacFenerstein, offered to pay him. “Send me a bill,” Buric wrote. “I have money to pay you in my trust account.”

Buric, in his affidavit, states, “MacFenerstein has announced that he has no intentions of filing any additional information, will not participate in the litigation and has hired a lawyer who tells me to leave Dr. MacFenerstein alone.”