Skateboarder Cory Juneau Suspended Six Months for Smoking Weed
The chief stereotype about skateboarders is that they’re also stoners, but that’s going to have to change now that skateboarding is an Olympic sport.
Because skateboarding is joining the Olympic program at Tokyo 2020, anti-doping organizations around the world have started drug testing competitors. And now we have what appears to be the first suspension of an American skateboarder.
Cory Juneau, a 19-year-old pro skater from Southern California currently ranked seventh in the world, was suspended six months after testing positive for THC, the main psychoactive element in marijuana.
USADA announced Tuesday that Juneau was suspended after a urine sample collected on Jan. 28, 2018 at an event in Brazil tested positive for THC. Brazilian authorities allowed USADA to handle the case and Juneau was handed a six-month suspension, which was later reduced to three months. Luckily for Juneau, he was able to serve his suspension while the case played out and he was reinstated on April 28, 2018.
When skateboarding was announced in 2016 as part of the 2020 Olympic program, the need for drug testing immediately raised concerns.
“I truly believe you do better sober, but I've known guys who couldn't skate unless they were stoned, so I don't know how it's really going to work,” skateboard legend Tas Pappas told ABC Australia at the time.
Juneau’s case will be a warning to any other skaters who like to toke. Now it could leave you on the sidelines.
