NBA to Eliminate Cannabis Ban for it's Players

It’s been a long time coming, but the National Basketball Association may finally make the cannabis testing moratorium they’ve held in place since the beginning of the pandemic permanent. Announced initially by New York Times’s The Athletic, the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association, which represents its players, have come to a tentative deal on a collective bargaining agreement. If fully ratified, the seven-year deal would not only eliminate drug testing for cannabis, but it would also allow NBA players to both promote and invest in cannabis companies.

Several former players have started their own cannabis brands, such as Al Harrington’s Viola Brands, and even someone like Carmelo Anthony, who last year played for the LA Lakers before becoming a free agent, has invested in LEUNE alongside John Wall. But this move would certainly open the floodgates for current members to engage in classic promotional activities that were once unthinkable even a decade ago. Could the cannabis version of the box of Wheaties be next? Should the current deal stand, it appears that anything’s possible.

The NBA and its Drug Policy

This development is a total about-face from the hardline stance taken by the NBA in 1983, when it became the first professional athletic league to institute an anti-drug policy. While the ban focused on heroin and cocaine, it implemented drug testing, which would later become standard for all sports organizations. Then-president of the NBA Bob Lanier said at the time, ''There is no question that professional basketball players are role models for young people all over the country, and particularly in inner cities. By telling the world that we, as professional athletes, will not tolerate the use of illegal drugs, we are setting a new standard, something that is absolutely essential in today's environment.'' Three years later, the tragic death of college basketball player Len Bias, who died of a cocaine overdose two days after being selected for the Boston Celtics, would usher in the era of mandatory minimums for drug offenses that led to death or serious injury.

At the time, the NBA was responding to a widespread cultural meme that pinned out-of-control drug use on its players. Not just a few hours after the NBA declared its ban, the NY Nets’ Michael Ray Richardson, who had just emerged from a stay in rehab for cocaine, declared no ban would deter those who were already addicted. Still, the NBA would move forward with cannabis testing in 1999, after players like Mookie Blaylock, J.R. Ryder and Vernon Maxwell were arrested for it in the two years prior. But in recent years, as the stigma began to slip and the pandemic took hold, the NBA placed a moratorium on cannabis testing. According to former player J.R. Smith’s testimony on the All the Smoke podcast, team members took full advantage of it. “We was blowing it down in there,” he told podcast hosts Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes. (Smith had previously been suspended for five games without pay after testing positive during the 2013-14 season. It cost him $250,000.)

The Changing Terrain

Various sports organizations have loosened their cannabis policies over the past few years, most notably the NHL, which doesn’t punish for positive tests, and the MLB, which removed it from its list of banned substances during the off-seasons starting in 2019. Still, the NBA does appear to take the lead once again, just as it did in 1983. After all, cannabis is legal in some fashion in 73% of the country where it currently has a team. It was certainly strengthened with the support given by the White House to WNBA Phoenix Mercury player Brittney Griner after her imprisonment in Russia for bringing a cannabis vape pen into the country.

Response has been varied. In a surprise commentary from Mexican president Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador, whose country is in the midst of legalizing cannabis, said of the development, “[The US] does not even limit drug use; on the contrary, they encourage it even in sports. It is sad and decadent.” However, US sports commentators see it as a long overdue acknowledgement of the changing realities and failed Drug War policies that had fallen heavily on NBA veterans like Larry Sanders, who eventually left the game after being suspended for cannabis in 2014-15. “Now that society's attitude toward marijuana has changed, so has the league's policy, finally. Still, some players who lost game checks to pot suspensions want a refund,” wrote Yardbarker’s Sean Keane, before retweeting J.R. Smith’s request to “get [his] bread back” from the organization.