Kentucky Commission reclassifies levamisole to a Class B drug
LEXINGTON, Ky. – The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission on Tuesday approved a reclassification of the anti-worming drug levamisole, one year after acknowledging that the drug was not classified under Kentucky’s rules.
The approval will make levamisole a Class B drug. The drug was declassified by the KHRC in 2015, which chose to make one of its metabolites, the stimulant aminorex, the subject of regulation, rather than the drug itself.
In 2020, the KHRC charged the trainer Joe Sharp with five levamisole positives, shortly after Louisiana had charged Sharp with a handful of positives for the same drug. On appeal, Sharp’s attorney, Clark Brewster, argued that the KHRC could not enforce any rules on levamisole without a positive finding of aminorex, pointing to the 2015 decision to declassify the drug. The rulings against Sharp were vacated.
The approval by the full KHRC came three weeks after the commission’s Equine Drug Research Council recommended the reclassification. That approval also came with the recommendation that trainers be advised to test their horses for the presence of the drug prior to entering them in races if they have used levamisole as a de-worming treatment.
Prior to the 2015 decision to declassify the drug, levamisole was a Class A medication in Kentucky. But a judge threw out that classification, calling the rational for the classification “arbitrary and capricious.”
Dr. Bruce Howard, the equine medical director of the commission, said at the Tuesday meeting that “there was very little information on this substance” at the time it was declassified, but he pointed to a new research study concluded in 2022 that had provided guidance on when levamisole clears a horse’s system when administered as a de-worming agent.
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