NCAA began its drug testing program in 1986.
Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
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Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
NCAA began its drug testing program in 1986.
Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
Over the previous decade, medical and leisure marijuana has change into extra broadly accepted, each culturally and legally. But in sports activities, pot can nonetheless get a nasty rap.
Recreational weed has been the supply of disappointment and disqualifications for athletes — like Sha’Carri Richardson, a U.S. sprinter poised who grew to become ineligible to compete within the Tokyo Olympics after testing constructive for marijuana.
But which will quickly change for school athletes.
An NCAA panel is asking for the affiliation to take away hashish from its banned drug listing and testing protocols. The group, the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports, stated that testing must be restricted to performance-enhancing medication and located that hashish doesn’t improve efficiency.
Each of the three NCAA divisional governance our bodies would nonetheless should introduce and undertake the rule change for hashish to be faraway from the affiliation’s banned drug listing, the NCAA stated in a assertion launched on Friday. The committee requested the NCAA to halt testing for hashish at championship occasions whereas modifications are thought of.
The NCAA is predicted to make a remaining resolution on the matter within the fall.
The panel argued that the affiliation ought to strategy hashish equally to alcohol, to shift away from punitive measures and give attention to educating student-athletes concerning the well being dangers of marijuana use.
The NCAA has been slowly reconsidering its strategy to hashish testing. Last yr, the affiliation raised the edge of THC, the intoxicant substance in hashish, wanted to set off a constructive drug check.
It’s not simply the NCAA that has been altering its stance on marijuana. The MLB introduced it was dropping marijuana from its listing of “medication of abuse” again in 2019. Meanwhile, in 2021, the NFL halted THC testing for gamers in the course of the off season.
The NCAA oversees faculty sports activities in about 1,100 faculties within the U.S. and Canada. More than 500,000 pupil athletes compete within the NCAA’s three divisions. The affiliation started its drug-testing program in 1986 to make sure competitions are honest and equitable.