MICHAEL JOHNSON, the 200 metres and 400 metres world record-holder, yesterday said that he is “sceptical” about Mark Lewis-Francis’s excuse that his positive test for cannabis was caused by passive smoking. UK Athletics (UKA) last week revealed that the British sprinter had been stripped of the silver medal he won at this year’s European Indoor Championships after traces of the illegal drug were found in his urine.

Lewis-Francis, 22, denied knowingly consuming cannabis, saying that he must have been “in the presence” of people smoking the drug. He escaped a two-year ban for taking a banned substance and was warned about his conduct. Johnson, who has been critical of the ambition and focus of British sprinters, refused to give much credibility to Lewis-Francis’s defence, which was accepted by UKA officials.

“Do I believe his story? No,” Johnson said at the Laureus Sports Awards here in Estoril. “I am sceptical because my question would be what level of cannabis you have to have in your system to test positive. I don’t want to give credit to that. It sounds like he tested positive, he gave his excuse and it was accepted. I don’t see an excuse for anything like that.” Scientific studies have shown it would take passive smoke from 16 joints to equal smoking one.

In his newspaper column before the positive test was made public, Johnson had predicted that 2005 would be Lewis-Francis’s breakthrough season because of a change in his attitude. “I did say at the end that he had a lot to learn and this is an exclamation point to that,” he said. “Maybe this will jolt him into being more serious about his talent and opportunities. I don’t think he understands how to take a God- given talent and turn it into achieving a goal. There really are no short cuts.”

It is the second medal that Lewis-Francis, a former world junior champion, has been forced to forfeit. After the 2003 World Championships, where he was a member of Great Britain’s 4 x 100 metres relay squad, six sprinters had to return their medals when it was announced that Dwain Chambers had tested positive for THG, the designer steroid.

Dave Collins, the UKA performance director, said that he hoped what had happened to Lewis-Francis would be a wake-up call to other British athletes about how they conduct their social lives. “Mark has learnt substantially from this and if our other athletes learn cannabis is on the banned list and they need to be extremely careful in their lifestyles, then that’s fine.

“Athletes are under substantial pressure to live to standards of behaviour which are far and beyond what you would expect from anybody else. This athlete knows the penalty and he’s experienced that penalty. If this sends a message to him and to other athletes, then good.”

Collins refused to be drawn on whether he believed Lewis-Francis’s claims. “I don’t believe him or disbelieve him. I don’t need to,” he said. “How it got into the body, be it by passive smoking or inhalation, is coincidental to the penalty and to the positive test.” Cannabis is on the list of banned substances, but it has no performance-enhancing effects.