The NBA Drug Policy and Marijuana

• Steve
• March 15, 2018
• 0 Comment
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When you think of the NBA and Marijuana what comes to mind? Better yet, who comes to mind?  Some older fans may think of Robert Parish, aptly nick named “Chief”, or the 80’s babies like myself think of Gary Payton, Damon Stoudamire, and Allen Iverson and their run ins with the law related to cannabis.  Some may actually assume that the NBA has a more lenient drug policy than the other sports leagues, but is that accurate?

The NBA does have different rules than the NFL.  The NFL can test you all year round, while the NBA gives you a defined window.  The NBA will suspend you for a fewer percentage of games and your paychecks than the NFL will as well, remember the NBA has an 82 game long season, the NFL only has 16.  If you get suspended for 4 games in the NFL that’s 25% of your season, that same suspension in the NBA thats 4% of your season, see the difference?

Aside from the percentage of time off and money out of your pocket, there is also the question of how much weed does it take to test positive? In the NFL that threshold is 35 ng/ml.  The threshold in the NBA is 15 ng/ml, which is noticeably lower than the NFL.  What’s true in both leagues is that by the time fans hear that a player is facing their first suspension for drug use violations, that player has already had multiple infractions involving a positive test previously.

The NBA clearly has a marijuana in place, enacted by former commissioner David Stern, but many in the league are asking the question when the league will take the big step of removing the plant from the banned substance list.

In the early 1990’s former NBA player Richard Dumas stated that if the league ever tested players for marijuana, “there wouldn’t be no NBA.”  He was basically implying that NBA stoners were prevalent at the time. It should be noted that in 1992 Dumas was suspended his rookie year for violating the NBA substance abuse policy and subsequently banned for the duration of his career after testing positive for a banned substance again and failing to go to rehab (so maybe we take what he says with a grain of salt).  While we don’t know which drugs Dumas used to violate the policy, and get himself banned, we do know that league did not suspend him for marijuana use.  We know this because the NBA did not begin testing for weed until the 2000 season.

Former NBA Commissioner David Stern not only heard Richard Dumas’ comments but he was also worried about the image of his league.  During the 1990’s there were players like Damon Stoudamire, Gary Patton, Rasheed Wallace, Allen Iverson, and even Robert Parish aka “The Chief”, who were all known for smoking pot.  Stern admitted to wanting to clean up the image of the league using player health and safety as the reasoning for marijuana testing.

With the league entering the 2000’s with a new policy, they found that less than three percent of players were actually using marijuana.  Of the 430 players, only 12 tested positive. The “punishment” for those players at the time was to enter what the NBA labeled as an “aftercare” program. While some could argue that players knew in advance that they were going to be tested, the league was admittedly happy with the low percentage of players using the drug and felt that their policy on marijuana worked.

Currently the NBA has a lower threshold for THC than the NFL does.  The NFL will allow for a sample to have up to 35 ng/ml where the NBA will only allow up to 15 ng/ml to record a positive test.  On the surface this seems as if the NFL is actually more lenient than the NBA, but when looking at the number of suspended players and the actual policies, we see a different story.

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