Judging by the relatively tame response the video received, the interest in this kind of thing is diminishing, which we should all be happy about. There isn't much reason for people to care about a person's private drug use these days, beyond the minor titillation of learning that some of the drugs being taken are illegal. But there are laws, and then there are drug laws. The spirit of illicit drug laws are essentially to save people from themselves, which at best is a dubious good intention and, at worst, a disgraceful idea that around the world incarcerates and ostracises minorities and the impoverished. Football's treatment of illicit drugs is a curious one, more in line with those good political intentions but one that still cannot escape how flawed the whole idea really is. The AFL's effort is, of course, primarily a corporate effort to appear both proper in the light of the law, and also understanding about the realities of its young players' lives. It tries hard to do this right but ultimately it's an effort that fails because a football league cannot do either thing well, since it has to straddle a fence that ought not to exist. Football and its constituents are hitched to many allegorical notions that reflect the marketability of sport, one of which pretends things would be better if only we lived a certain, pure way that would take us to a place without drugs, and without anything much but the sound of people congratulating themselves. To listen to Matt Finnis speak in the aftermath of the video makes you wonder about what that future sporting scene will be like. One of the unfortunate outcomes of the AFL's corporate vision is that its spokespeople have to stand up after these incidents and pay penance to a kind of invisible moral hand that sponsorship uses to squeeze everything closed.

For me, this apologetic aspect is the strangest, and now most interesting part of the AFL's response to non-performance-enhancing drugs. Firstly that Carlisle should have to come sulking forward in the aftermath, and secondly that smart people like Finnis should have to stand up and suggest in a serious voice that Carlisle can still "become the player and, perhaps more importantly, the person that we all want him to be". In Finnis' defense, his position in this is impossible. And it's complicated further by St Kilda's recent history of misconduct, but this is another way the AFL gets drugs wrong. One scandal is not the same as another. Private drug use should never be thrown into a basket of misbehaviours that also contains allegations of rape and abuse. No one would admit they are equating these things, but in terms of marketability they are, and this was inferred in some of St Kilda's other comments. Finnis also had to tell us, "Our football club has done a lot of work, as part of a rebuild of our organisation, to create a new St Kilda." What is interesting in the days following this episode is that most people I have heard from around town were generally more bemused that Carlisle filmed and broadcast his drug use, than they were scandalised by the fact of it. So it begs the question: Who is a better corporate role model, the sportsman who is adept at properly concealing the truth about his private life, or the sportsman who claims that all of his thoughts and actions are pure? Both positions are essentially disingenuous, and why it is hard work listening to the league inform people about self-improvement.

None of this is the result of any one person. It's part of the AFL's gig, and it's complicated. But it's possible we can help ourselves escape some of this political distraction by choosing to show less interest in these things, brought to us as they are in the hope of gaining a "like", and a "share". Ironically, the only depoliticised aspect in all of this was the video itself. One could argue that, until the corporate hand descended upon Carlisle and forced him into a hollow apology, his was the only genuine position.