The NBA has agreed not to randomly test players for marijuana this season, a continuation of the policy that was put in place last year for the COVID-19 restart bubble and has remained in place ever since.
Drug testing for human growth hormone and performance-enhancing substances will continue, along with what the league calls drugs of abuse such as methamphetamine, cocaine and opiates. But the league’s agreement with the National Basketball Players Association on randomized marijuana trials will continue for at least one more season.
“We agreed with the NBPA to extend the suspension of randomized testing for marijuana for the 2021-22 season and focus our randomized trial program on performance-enhancing products and drugs,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said on Wednesday. Has happened.
The agreement for the players was disclosed in a memorandum of association, details of which were first reported by ESPN. The league suspended testing in March 2020 when play was suspended in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, then agreed to a performance-enhancing test with players in the bubble at Walt Disney World that summer.
But marijuana wasn’t on that list, wasn’t tested for last season and now won’t be this season either.
The criminalization of marijuana has been a major issue at the state level for years, as has been the case in the sports world. Earlier this year, American sprinter Shakari Richardson was dropped from the US teams’ Olympic roster after a positive test for marijuana, leading her to run on the 4×100 relay team in Tokyo, also earning her the 100 Meters ranked in individual. Caste.
Following the announcement of Richardson’s suspension, two members of Congress US Representatives. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D.Y., and Jamie Ruskin, D-M.D., wrote to U.S. and global anti-doping leaders in part to say that the marijuana ban is a significant and unnecessary burden on athletes’ civil liberties.
More than half of the states in the US have decriminalized possession of marijuana in small quantities.
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