NFL ACKNOWLEDGES DRUG EXEMPTIONS

Comments Follow Release Of Tape From '95 Meeting

NEW YORK - The NFL puts suspensions for failed drug tests on hold during
two-year period earlier this decade. That allowed 16 players to avoid
punishment while the league negotiated its current comprehensive drug
policy, the league said.

That policy "took two years to negotiate and several years worth of cases
were held abeyance," league spokesman Greg Aiello acknowledged Monday,
"There were 16 players in the old program facing some kind of suspension.
They were only suspended upon further violation of the new program."

His comments came in response to a published report based on a tape of a
1995 union meeting.

Of the 16 players who failed tests in 1993-94, six were later suspended for
violating the new drug policy.

Aiello said that in 1993 the NFL and the players union began to negotiate a
new drug program as part of the collective bargaining agreement. Previously,
drug policy was unilaterally implemented by the league.

"The league drug policy was not endorsed or supported or did not include the
involvement of the union in any way," Aiello said.

To get union approval, extensive negotiations, lasting two years, were required.

The league issued a statement yesterday saying, "In 1995, all 16 players
were slotted into the new program, tested regularly, treated by professional
counselors and physicians, and subject to suspension under any further
violations. This was done to allow those players to take advantage of the
new program's mandatory counseling and treatment provisions. These mandatory
aspects of the new program were not part of the old program."

In 1995, the first year of the new policy, 10 players were suspended for
failing drug tests.

Under the old policy, one failed test put the player in the drug program, a
second test resulted in a four-game suspension and a third sat him down for
at least one year. The new policy changed the punishment for a second
violation to a fine, followed by a four-game suspension for a third
violation, then a minimum one-year suspension for a forth.