An NCAA panel recommends dropping marijuana from its banned drug checklist : NPR

NCAA began its drug testing program in 1986.

Mike Ehrmann/Getty Photographs

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Mike Ehrmann/Getty Photographs

NCAA began its drug testing program in 1986.

Mike Ehrmann/Getty Photographs

Over the previous decade, medical and leisure marijuana has turn into extra broadly accepted, each culturally and legally. However in sports activities, pot can nonetheless get a nasty rap.

Leisure 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 optimistic for marijuana.

However that will quickly change for school athletes.

An NCAA panel is looking for the affiliation to take away hashish from its banned drug checklist and testing protocols. The group, the NCAA Committee on Aggressive Safeguards and Medical Facets of Sports activities, stated that testing needs to be restricted to performance-enhancing medication and located that hashish doesn’t improve efficiency.

Every of the three NCAA divisional governance our bodies would nonetheless must introduce and undertake the rule change for hashish to be faraway from the affiliation’s banned drug checklist, 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-about.

The NCAA is predicted to make a remaining determination 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 deal with educating student-athletes concerning the well being dangers of marijuana use.

The NCAA has been slowly reconsidering its strategy to hashish testing. Final 12 months, the affiliation raised the edge of THC, the intoxicant substance in hashish, wanted to set off a optimistic drug take a look at.

It isn’t simply the NCAA that has been altering its stance on marijuana. The MLB introduced it was dropping marijuana from its checklist of “medication of abuse” again in 2019. In the meantime, 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 colleges within the U.S. and Canada. Greater than 500,000 scholar 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.