Karmichael Hunt refuses to say if court fine a poor deterrent

Queensland Reds player Karmichael Hunt has declined to comment on claims his $2500 court-imposed fine for cocaine possession will not act as a drug use deterrent to young footballers.

The code-hopping fallen hero fronted media on Friday morning, a day after pleading guilty to four counts of cocaine possession.

At times becoming emotional and deflecting the answering of questions to Queensland Rugby Union chief executive Jim Carmichael, Hunt all but admitted the four times he bought cocaine from Gold Coast drug dealer John Touma was not his first association with the party drug.

"I don't have a perfect past is all I can say," he said.

But he insisted his cocaine use was strictly recreational.

"I don't have a drug problem," he said.

In Southport Magistrates Court on Thursday, Hunt admitted to buying cocaine from Touma four times in September and October last year, in what his lawyer described as a "misguided, post-season celebration".

The court heard Hunt bought a so-called eight-ball, or 3.5 grams of the drug, for $1100 three times and on a fourth occasion he bought two grams for a sum undisclosed by the prosecution.

The 28-year-old was one of 10 current and former football players across two codes that became embroiled in controversy when they unwittingly got caught in a Queensland Crime and Corruption sting targeting cocaine trafficking in the state's south east corner.

Hunt declined to confirm or deny speculation that cocaine use was rampant among elite football players of all codes.

The speculation peaked in the wake of the CCC sting that netted himself and nine other current and former football players on cocaine supply and possession charges.

"It's a social problem, a problem our society is facing it's not isolated to sport, it's a wider issue," he said.

The question on everyone's lips, why he did it, also went unanswered.

"I don't want to address that right now, mistakes were made I'll leave it at that," he said.

When it came to questions of much-discussed claims his court-imposed $2500 fine was too light, Hunt remained tight-lipped.

Mr Carmichael indicated it was the enormous amount of publicity that surrounded Hunt sensationally being charged last month that would act as the true deterrent to younger football players contemplating drug use.

"Everyone who has been touched by this case, from an organisational perspective, I don't think we're ever going to satisfy people with the right penalty or wrong penalty," he said.

"What needs to be considered is balance.

"There's a lot of things we need to learn from what's happened."

The QRU fined Hunt $30,000, stripped him of his team's vice-captaincy and banned him for six weeks in the wake of the court sentence on Thursday.

Mr Carmichael said Hunt was continuing to go through an emotional time following the court hearing.

"I certainly know what we are going through today is a life-changing experience," he said.

"It's a very difficult day and there's a lot of stuff we have to deal with moving forward."

Touma was the central focus of CCC investigators and all football players charged, six of them linked to NRL's Gold Coast Titans, are alleged to have bought drugs from him.

The CCC initially charged Hunt with four counts of drug supply, stemming from his distribution of the drugs to friends.

However, those charges were dismissed on Thursday when he agreed to plead guilty to the lesser possession charges.