Why The NFL Looks The Other When it Comes to Pot
Players really have to either be stupid or arrogant to get caught if they choose to smoke weed. Press play to find out why.
The NFL substance abuse policy is a joke and although no one asked me, that’s by design.
Players are tested generally between mid-April and mid-August and it’s usually done when players are all together, primarily as part of the league’s effort to reduce the costs of testing. Once tested, players are not tested again for one year.
If busted for the first time a player enters stage 1 of the league’s drug program for 90 days. Stay clean and you exit the program. Not penalty. Essentially a do-over after 90 days.
Only careless players or those who have been coddled their entire careers and have fostered a massive sense of self-entitlement, get caught. The so-called randomness of the tests are actually fairly predictable and when combined with the masking agents available to players, you have to be pretty stupid to get caught.
But once players pass, they have nearly a full calendar year to unleash their inner Snoop Dogg.
You might ask yourself why the league’s substance abuse policies are rather lax. Maybe the league thinks that marijuana is by far the lesser evil when compared to painkillers like Vicodin. And with good reason.
Let’s face it, these players play a brutal sport consisting of men who are bigger and faster and train more vigorously than ever. They use cutting edge equipment on state-of-the art fields, BOTH intended to maximize performance.
I’m not a rocket scientist but when you increase mass and you increase velocity, the impact is more violent – the level of pain increases.
And so to does the temptation to use marijuana in the NFL.
