(Kimberley Crow is an Australian Institute of Sport scholarship holder, member of the women's rowing team and graduate lawyer.)

In recent years the AFL has copped a fair amount of flak over its Illicit Drugs Policy (the AFL IDP). Chief executive Andrew Demetriou and his cronies have weathered the criticism like leeches to blood, sticking steadfast to their guns.

Every criticism of the "three strikes" policy as too lenient is met with a stubborn re-iteration of expert advice proclaiming the "three strikes" rule to be, in fact, best practice.

For those critics who have condemned the AFL's IDP as going soft on drugs, it might come as some surprise that the Australian Sports Commission has only just followed suit, introducing their own Illicit Drugs in Sport Policy (the ASC IDiS Policy) effective 1 October this year.

As Australian Institute of Sport athletes, we were emailed details of the policy last week, and will undergo education sessions in the coming months, followed by inclusion in testing pools after that. Until now, our drug testing has been wholly governed by the WADA code where illicit drugs are only tested for in-competition.

By testing AFL players for illicit drugs out of competition, the AFL was actually going above and beyond their obligations under the WADA Code. The nature of the sanctions for those illicit drugs breaches - or the three-strike rule - should be understood in the context of the actual comprehensiveness of AFL's testing regime.

In fact, the AFL can take some form of comfort that their policy is now something of an industry blueprint. The purpose and principles guiding the ASC IDiS are largely identical to those of the AFL IDP. The focus is on education, the ASC IDiS preamble outlining that "[t]he use of illicit drugs is harmful to Athletes. The ASC seeks to educate Athletes to deter the use of illicit drugs. Further, the use of illicit drugs by Athletes can bring the ASC and sport into disrepute and sets a poor example for other members of the community who view Athletes as role models."

The policy goes on to specify key messages to be delivered through initiatives related to the policy, which include illicit drug use being harmful, illicit drug use affecting your sporting performance, illicit drug use affecting your reputation and illicit drug use impacting on the community who support you. Nothing controversial there.

The sanctions under the ASC IDiS are similar, but not identical, to the AFL IDP. For a first illicit drugs breach, AIS athletes are subject to target testing and required to attend counselling. For a second breach, the athlete is required to attend another round of counselling, target testing continues, and the athlete receives a suspension of all ASC benefits for not less than four weeks. For a third breach this suspension is increased to a minimum of eight weeks, and for a fourth breach the athlete will have their AIS scholarship revoked.

There appears to be differences surrounding disclosure of results. In the wake of the Travis Tuck affair, Hawthorn FC publicly criticised the AFL IDP for its failure to inform clubs of first and second breaches, effectively disabling them from providing assistance.

This problem is absent from the ASC IDiS, where ASADA, the National Sporting Organisation and the person's State Institute of Sport may be notified of any breach. It is unclear the extent to which this information can be further disseminated.

This difference is interesting, seeing as many experts endorsed the AFL's policy which restricts disclosure of information upon first and second offences to club doctors, a counsellor and the player.

The argument was that coaches and administrators are unqualified in dealing with drug issues and are better left out at first instance. This was in keeping with the educational foundations of the policy.

In relation to disclosure to the public, unlike the third strike "shaming" under the AFL IDP, there is no provision in the ASC IDiS for disclosing any breaches to the public, except in an anonymous fashion. In practice, this difference may be minimal. A minimum four-week suspension from ASC benefits - which would include training as this involves ASC facilities and coaches - would be difficult to explain upon any basis other than the ASC IDiS. I'm unsure how this information could be effectively hidden from the public domain.

I must admit that at first glance, the penalties under the ASC IDiS appear lenient, but it must be remembered that the testing for illicit drugs goes above and beyond any testing required by the WADA Code, and above and beyond testing experienced by most people outside the sporting world.

As an elite athlete, I am more than happy to be subject to illicit drug testing. I agree that athletes are role models and should behave accordingly.

I do think though that we should be careful in how we frame the illicit drugs debate. This is a different matter to that of performance enhancing drug cheats, who most definitely should be severely punished. With illicit drugs, we are dealing with a complex social issue. For this reason, both policies, in keeping with expert advice, have come down in favour of education based regimes rather than severe, punishment based regimes.

Only time will tell whether the ASC IDiS will be met with similar condemnation as the AFL IDP.