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Originally Posted by phystech
I own a horse in Maryland and had a conversation with my trainer the other day about what you mention above, Cannon Shell. With the focus being on trying to find a way to take the accidents out of medication overages, I suggested that all meds be made accountable for. Could all meds in a vets box be controlled by the state and made so that a vet could only have in his box what he had been issued by a state vet, for example?
Part of our conversation was on Pletcher's Mepivacaine (sp?) pos that he's serving now. My trainer couldn't think of a good reason that the Mep should have even been in a vet's box, much less administered. If that truely is the case, then why not make it so a vet can only have state issued drugs, with those drugs and their administration fully traceable through records that show which horse received what and how much, and then have the vet's box checked each day on the way in and out of each stable area?
I'm sure there's lots of pro's and con's to what I've suggested but, geez, we have to start somewhere.....
Thoughts?
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Though it is my opinion that the states wont give up control of the regulations, that is in no way an endorsement of any states rules, regulations, regulators or vets. I served on a medication commitee that met with the KY horse racing authority in an attempt to draft reasonable and enforceable rules concerning medications,withdrawls, thresholds, shockwave, etc. We met 4 times with some enlightenment on both sides. However this whole event was a charade on the states part to say that they had met with us (horsemen) and we approved what they were doing. Though we managed to tweak some of the proposed rules (many were so far off...) almost nothing of any value was accomplished. It was a political move on the part of the KHRA and they emphasized this by saying that they did not
have to meet with us ut they did it as though they were extending some sort of olive branch. The whole medication issue is very complex, there are so many variables and the racing commissions just dont want to spend the time, money, or effort on it. Taht is why so many states supposedly adopted the Racing Consortium's model rules, though few states actually abide by them. Also understand that the state vets in most of the states are not exactly experts in anything other than taking a fairly low paying job that no smart vetwould want. There are exceptions and these people work hard but I doubt that most of them have he ability to be of any help concerning medication.
I'm not sure why your trainer would have said that Mepiviciane would not be found in a vets box. It is commonly used as a nerve block to try to determine the exact point of acute lameness. The withdrawl time is fairly consistent in most jurisdictions and every vet that I have ever used carried it.
The biggest problem when keeping track of records and such is the cost. Who picks up the cost of hiring and training people to go through the vets trucks, keep records, etc. It would be a huge job and it would cost quite a bit of money to do. The tracks would try to put it onto the states, the states would cry poor and as usual nothing gets done. It is probably a pretty good idea to have full disclosure in regards to medication but there are barriers.