Over the last year, cannabis has made more strides socially. The negative perception is leading more companies and organizations to do away with cannabis drug screening and its repercussions altogether. Most recently, the NBA and NBPA have decided to indefinitely refrain from cannabis drug testing. The choice was to extend a policy created last year that halted testing temporarily.
With the public eye growing more green, sports organizations that frowned on cannabis use are changing their tune. Furthermore, these organizations are trying to offer more natural remedies with the rise of drugs like methamphetamine, MDMA, cocaine, and opiates among other substances.
“Players won’t be subject to random tests for marijuana this season, according to @NBPA memo shared w/ players and obtained by ESPN. That’s been adjusted policy thru Orlando restart and 2020-‘21 season. Testing continues for “drugs of abuse and performance enhancing substances.”
–Adrian Wojnarowski, from Twitter
Despite the extension, the NBA still recognizes cannabis as federally illegal; players can still get charged for crimes. Alternatively, however, they won’t be suspended for use in-season.
A FOLLOWING TREND
The NBA now joins the MLB in refraining from random cannabis drug screening. The UFC also changed their policy recently to only recognize ‘excessive’ amounts of cannabis to be considered ‘performance-enhancing. The list of companies changing their stance is rapidly growing, with giants like Amazon doing away with the employee screening practice as well.
“While we want to continue to prevent athletes from competing under the influence of marijuana, and we have learned that urinary levels of carboxy-THC are highly variable after out-of-competition use and have poor scientific correlation to in-competition impairment,” stated Jeff Novitzky, UFC Senior Vice President of Athlete Health and Performance. “THC is fat soluble, meaning that once ingested, it is stored in fatty tissues and organs in the body and can be released back into the circulation, and consequently carboxy-THC appears in the urine, sometimes long after ingestion. It is therefore not an ideal marker in athletes to indicate in-competition impairment.”
The changing stigma is even turning more politicians to the green side. The current cabinet may not have any plans to join the “green” party; but, the great of the country might finally force them to do so regardless.
