'High Expectations'? NBA Won't Test For Pot

'High Expectations'? The NBA Announces That For This Season, It Won't Test For Pot

DALLAS - If marijuana is your thing, the NBA isn’t going to stand in the way of any NBA player using it — at least this season.

The league announced on Friday that it would suspend random testing for marijuana for the 2020-21 season.

As reported by several outlets, the league cited the pandemic as the main reason for suspending the tests.

"Due to the unusual circumstances in conjunction with the pandemic, we have agreed with the NBPA to suspend random testing for marijuana for the 2020-21 season and focus our random testing program on performance-enhancing products and drugs of abuse," NBA spokesperson Mike Bass said in a statement.

This isn’t the first time the league has suspended the testing for marijuana, either. They did so during the league’s time in the bubble in Orlando earlier this year.

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But could these suspensions give the NBA Players Association more ammunition to try and get marijuana removed completely from the Collective Bargaining Agreement?

The NBA and the Players Association amended the CBA in November for the 2020-21 season, but the vast majority of those amendments were related to the salary cap, the luxury tax and other player-cost related items. It also curtailed the season to 72 games.

The entire CBA doesn’t expire until after the 2023-24 season, though both sides have a mutual opt-out clause they could exercise after the 2022-23 season. It does not, however, mean the sides cannot renegotiate sooner.

Per the league’s CBA, marijuana is currently classified as a “drug of abuse,” and positive tests can lead treatment, fines and suspensions, the last of which come in five-game increments. Evidence can include positive test(s), use or possession, a guilty plea in court or a conviction. But the penalties are far less significant than the penalties for more powerful drugs of abuse, such as cocaine, which can lead to disqualification from the NBA, with the opportunity to apply for reinstatement after two years.

A story by ESPN’s Emily Kaplan in April highlighted each professional sport’s policy when it comes to marijuana and determined that, by comparison to the NFL, NHL and MLB, that the NBA’s policy is currently the harshest. The NFL recently raised their thresholds for a positive test and eliminated mandatory suspensions (similar to the NHL), while MLB in late 2019 removed marijuana from its “drugs of abuse” category completely at both the Major League and Minor League level. This comes at a time, Kaplan wrote, when the majority of the teams in the four major professional sports make their homes in cities, states and provinces that have legalized either recreational use of marijuana or medical use of marijuana.

The NBA appears to be listening, and commissioner Adam Silver has been since before the 2019 NBA Finals, as he talked about the issue during a Yahoo! Sports interview.

"One of the things I've been talking more about in the last year is mental wellness of our players," Silver said. "And look, some guys are smoking pot just in the same way a guy would take a drink. And it's like whatever, 'Smoking pot, I'm just using it to come down a little bit or I just want to relax.' No big deal. No issue. And I think it's the reason why it has been legalized in a lot of states. And from that standpoint, if that were the only issue, maybe we're behind the times in our program. On the other hand, there's also guys in the league who are smoking a lot of pot. And then the question is, why are you smoking a lot of pot? And that's where mental wellness comes in. Because I've also talked directly to players who say, 'I'm smoking a lot of pot, because I have a lot of anxiety. And I'm struggling.'"

So there are "pot jokes'' to be made here, to be sure ... but there is a serious issue here as well. The NBA is clearly trying to stay with the times - while also aiding players who need help.