THE federal Sports Minister, Senator George Brandis, is an enlightened man. Seizing on the Ben Cousins story on Thursday, he made the extraordinarily perspicacious observation: "It is not tenable for any national sporting organisation to be dragging the chain in relation to drugs in sport."

Really, George? Welcome to the 1980s. Tell us something we didn't know. Where the hell have you been all these years? What are the qualifications for being sports minister anyway?

What George fails to understand is that the case he's lecturing us on isn't a drugs-in-sport issue. There is no suggestion of sporting impropriety. Whether there has been a culture of illicit drug use at the West Coast football club or not, the Cousins case is about drugs in society. It just so happened that a high-profile footballer appears to have succumbed. During the season just past, he was one of about 700 on AFL team lists.

One in 700: that's 0.143 per cent of AFL players has crashed to earth. George and I would probably agree that it's highly likely more than one AFL footballer is doing drugs of some sort. We would disagree, though, on the cause.

I would argue that footballers doing illicit drugs are a reflection of a general pattern of behaviour in society and that, while we can hope, we can't realistically expect that a group of 700 won't reflect to some degree problems within the society that produces them. By and large, they live highly disciplined lives and some of them, whether it's because of background, personality or any other factor, are going to break out.

George seems to have a simpler view. He believes it's all due to the flaws in the AFL's illicit drugs policy. Because players aren't punished until they return a third positive test, George believes the code encourages drug use. He won't rest until he has smashed Andrew Demetriou's policy into a thousand pieces.

What George, and others who decry the AFL policy for being soft, must explain to us is this: if the AFL, the first sports administration in the land to introduce an illicit drugs code, is experiencing some problems with players using illicit drugs, why aren't all the sports that have no policy at all having much worse problems? And why aren't they being castigated by government the way football is?

The last question requires a two-part answer. The first, obviously, is that there's an election ahead and the Federal Government has a bloodhound's nose for an issue that might capture the attention of middle Australia.

The second is that there's a fair slice of ego involved. Demetriou tried not to revel in it but you just knew he rather enjoyed letting George and the Minister for Aged Care, Christopher Pyne, make complete geese of themselves back in May. That was when the two ministers were going to straighten the AFL out over its illicit drugs policy. They strode into AFL House like a couple of gunslingers into a Dodge City saloon, drew their guns, aimed at the top of the whisky bottle and shot each other in the foot.

Now Cousins has given them another chance and George isn't the only one taking aim. He is supported by seemingly the entire national media who scarcely seemed to observe that Cousins was being hung, drawn, quartered and sacked on Wednesday without so much as having had his day in court. This was after he had been run to ground by detectives and arrested for that most heinous of offences: being in possession of valium for which he couldn't provide a prescription.

Cousins' apparent desire to be a real-life Ned Kelly appears to have come to fruition. No amount of armour was going to protect him from this. After the death of a friend and mentor, it seems he had cracked. Neither the AFL nor his club could tolerate the heat of even waiting for the outcome of his court case before he was sacked, presumably for good.

It's a story that has produced thundering judgements. Everyone: George, the AFL, its clubs, pontificating media commentators, and a good slice of the public want the drug problem controlled. Don't we all? If only it were that easy.

Just tell us this, though, George: if Cousins didn't return one positive test over the past three years, how would your policy have saved him?