Wiedmer: Is suspended driver Mayfield a villain or NASCAR victim?

Jimmy Plumlee will quickly tell you, "I'm eat up with racing."

The 46-year-old husband and father is so eat up that he'll spend Friday night at Green Valley Speedway near Gadsden, Ala., and Saturday night at Fort Payne Motor Speedway racing his beloved four-cylinder Pony cars at speeds of 80 mph or more around a half-mile track.

He also races Hobby cars at more than 100 mph, their V-8 engines roaring like lions.

And just for the record, he doesn't believe NASCAR driver Jeremy Mayfield has ever climbed into car No. 41 with methamphetamines in his system, despite a second laboratory confirming that contention.

"My understanding is that he was taking a drug prescribed by his doctor," Plumlee said. "If that's true, then I think he should be allowed to keep racing. But if it's not, I know I'd be very concerned if someone I was racing against was using meth."

Though Plumlee will have no say in what transpires today in U.S. District Court in Charlotte, N.C., no lawyer could have summed up Mayfield's situation better.

If the 41-year-old driver is correct that the two drugs he has admitted taking -- the allergy med Claritin-D and the ADHD drug Adderall -- could somehow deliver a false positive, then he should be back racing again this weekend at Daytona.

However, if Mayfield is lying about the meth, then he can and should say goodbye to his racing career. After all, would you want to share a track with a guy hopped up on meth and 38 other drivers pushing 200 mph? Does that sound like sanity to you?

Or as Plumlee said, "Some of the guys I race against drive like they're crazy, but it's nice to know they're not."

We know enough to know now that anyone ingesting meth so much as a single time is nutso.

"There are some people who believe that meth is different, that it's more addictive than anything else," said Greg Stepfaniak, a drug abuse counselor at CADAS. "I don't know that I'm ready to say that. I've heard of people who say they tried meth once and that was it.

"But should someone be behind the wheel of a race car when they're on meth? Let's put it this way: If a trucker tests positive for meth one time, they can never go back on the road again. And trucks don't go half as fast as race cars."

Beyond its highly addictive qualities, Stepfaniak said, "Meth screws you up mentally and emotionally."

For Exhibit A, Stepfaniak pointed to the madman Adolph Hitler, who reportedly used it during World War II.

"People think meth is a new drug," he said. "It's been around for a long, long time, possibly more than 100 years."

Mayfield doesn't have 100 years, of course. This is his whole career. If he loses in court today, his career is probably over. If the judge reinstates him, who knows what will happen? As NASCAR argued in its brief, "The safety risk is simply too significant to let Mayfield back on the track."

This all began on May 9 when Mayfield was suspended for failing a random drug test he had taken eight days earlier in Richmond.

Mayfield's attorneys are expected to produce affidavits from experts that Claritin-D can sometimes produce a positive test for methamphetamines. What they may have trouble arguing is why their client's Adderall prescription came from the Vitality Anti-Aging Center and Medical Spa in Hickory, N.C., rather than from his personal physician.

NASCAR will counter that two different labs found evidence of meth in Mayfield's urine samples.

Plumlee believes there's a solution to this case that's far simpler than a judge's decision in district court.

"I'd give him a lie-detector test," he said. "If he fails, he's out. If he passes, he races."

Then it would likely fall to his fellow drivers to decide if the safety risk was too significant to join him on the track. Talk about being tested mentally and emotionally.