Six Players Suspended in Diuretic Case

[JonLP24]

The NFL has announced that it has suspended six players without pay for testing positive for a banned substance.

The suspensions are for four games each.

The players are tailback Deuce McAllister and defensive ends Will Smith and Charles Grant of the New Orleans Saints, defensive tackles Pat Williams and Kevin Williams of the Minnesota Vikings and Houston Texans long snapper Bryan Pittman.

The players reportedly tested positive for a banned diuretic contained in a weight-loss product.

Attorney David Cornwell, who represents several of the players involved in the case, indicated after a recent set of appeal hearings that the independent administrator of the NFL's testing program, John Lombardo, testified he'd known previously that the weight-loss product contained the banned substance but he hadn't informed players of that for fear that other players might use that as a defense for positive tests in unrelated cases.

At least some of the players had maintained in their appeals that they tested positive for the banned diuretic bumetanide, which is on the NFL's list of prohibited substances as a possible masking agent for steroids, after using the weight-loss product StarCaps. The players had contended that the diuretic was not on the product's label and they ingested the banned substance unknowingly. Cornwell had said his clients would not have used StarCaps if they'd been informed that it contained bumetanide.
http://views.washingtonpost.com/theleague/nflnewsfeed/2...