Musselburgh racegoer caught taking drugs into course on Saturday

For the second time in a week a racegoer has been caught trying to take drugs on to a Scottish racetrack.

A man attempted to sneak in three grams of substances as he arrived for the sell-out ladies’ day meeting at Musselburgh on Saturday, six days after ten people were charged for drugs offences at Kelso, where police seized more than £700 worth of drugs packages.

Musselburgh racecourse chief executive Bill Farnsworth said on Sunday: “The guy was caught trying to bring in the drugs under his arm. I'm sure he's going to be in big trouble. There were a lot of sniffer dogs at the track and a big police presence as we need to try to control this problem.

“It’s bad enough that people try to bring in drugs for personal use, but more worrying is the danger that dealers will try to get in to sell the stuff. We must do everything we can to try to stop that."

Farnsworth continued: “We've been having an increased police presence, more CCTV coverage and sniffer dogs at feature meetings and random meetings for 18 months. Apart from drugs and other public disorder problems there’s also a greater terrorism threat.

“We’re doing lots of work with the police and I’m delighted to say that despite the 10,300 crowd I haven’t heard of any other major problems."

Farnsworth added that the track was using social media to alert racegoers to increased security and hoped that would act as a drugs deterrent.

“We even put out something last week about the sniffer dog team meeting the office terriers as a bit of a joke, and that went viral," he said.

“We have a good relationship with the police and the public seem to appreciate their presence now. People used to say the police were quite rude to them but now, with the environment of terrorism we live in, they seem to have much more respect for the police and what they do.”

Lee Mottershead on the drugs threat to racing