The pressure on the AFL's Illicit Drug Policy continues to grow. Andrew Demetriou has both index fingers in the dyke, his football operations man, Adrian Anderson, likewise. One wonders which will occur first: they run out of digits, or the seemingly inexorable pressure brings the wall crashing down.

The policy has drawn heavy criticism, much of it because it doesn't deliver punishment until a player has offended three times. Many say this is too lenient, that there should either be zero tolerance or that two strikes provide sufficient leeway. It is designed, according to the AFL and its players' association, as a policy of harm-minimisation.

My own view is that it was always grossly unwise for a sport's administration to undertake illicit drug testing. If it was truly done for reasons of welfare it was self-important, if it was done to scare the players off drugs it was administrative self-indulgence. It is an invasion of privacy, formally approved from the players' point of view only by the small coterie who at the time formed the executive of the AFLPA. It should never have been imposed on the whole playing group without something close to unanimous support.

It didn't take long for the cracks to appear. Already the confidentiality aspect of the policy has required a couple of Supreme Court injunctions to hang together. We've also discovered the testing is a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Ben Cousins was a donkey, living with a drug habit for a period measurable in years; yet, although he was under suspicion and target-tested, the AFL-employed drug detectives were never able to pin three positive tests on him.

Now Fremantle's Michael Johnson has been charged with possession of cocaine. He has been stood down by his club and is unlikely to play before his court hearing on 5 July. A seven-week penalty, consistent with that of Geelong's Matthew Stokes earlier in the year, is being predicted. That would be the same as the suspension dealt out to Barry Hall in 2008 for brutally knocking out Brent Staker in the most egregious on-field assault to have occurred in decades.

Yet if Johnson had returned a positive test to cocaine under the illicit drug code, he would have had a confidential one-strike recorded next to his name and would play this week and beyond. The crime which has cost him is not that of being in possession of cocaine, it is of being caught by the law. The degree of culpability, apparently, is determined by whether detection is private or public. This, surely, gives a strong hint as to what this policy is really about.

The hard-liners, meanwhile, are having a picnic. These are people who argue that the behaviour of footballers might corrupt their children and that the AFL must savagely punish players for any offences involving illicit drugs. They are contemptuous of the three strikes policy and now they can say: "You punished Stokes and Johnson for one visible offence, what about the players you know to have returned two strikes? They are being protected." And it's hard to argue with their logic.

By now, surely, the players must wonder why they ever signed on to such a misguided and invasive scheme. No doubt it seemed like a good idea at the time because the AFL wanted it and the AFL decides how much money the players can earn. Next time they might think twice. The problem with the illicit drugs policy is that, until it implodes completely, there won't be a next time.