NBA does not randomly test athletes for cannabis during season 75 |

The National Basketball Association (NBA) recently released a memo stating that it will not test its athletes for cannabis for the entire coming season.

NBA spokesman Mike Bass announced on October 6 that cannabis test athletes would be eligible for the remainder of the age 75.

“We agreed with the NBPA to extend the suspension of random testing for marijuana for the 2021-22 season and to focus our random testing program on performance-enhancing products and drugs,” said Bass.

NBA players were given a memo of the news, but ESPN was the first to receive the memo and report the information, according to a statement from ESPN Senior NBA Insider Adrian Wojnarowski.

“Players will not be randomly tested for marijuana this season,” read an @NBPA memo shared with players and received by ESPN. This policy has been updated with the Orlando restart and the 2020-’21 season. The tests for “drugs of abuse and performance-enhancing substances” will continue, he said on Twitter.

The NBA first announced in March 2020 that it would suspend random drug testing for cannabis as the pandemic intensified. Testing resumed at the Orlando Bubble later in the summer of 2020, according to the Associated Press, to look for performance-enhancing substances – but cannabis wasn’t one of the substances athletes were tested for, primarily to reduce unnecessary contact for gamers.

Reporter Ben Dowsett was one of the first to confirm this change over the past year through league sources he shared in a Twitter post in December 2020.

“Sources say this decision is largely based on COVID security – just another way to limit unnecessary contact. However, many in the league also expect significant expectations that the entire marijuana testing program is on its way in the near future. ”

It is still possible that the NBA will eventually decide to end cannabis testing for good, despite no official announcement being made. Cannabis was not on the list of testable substances last season in the NBA, and it is now clear that no cannabis will be tested by athletes this season either.

There are many factors that can be attributed to the NBA’s consent to stop cannabis testing for athletes, but one of the reasons is because athletes advocate cannabis and its effectiveness as a medicine. Countless athletes have spoken up, and many of them have started their own cannabis business, like former NBA athlete Chris Webber. His company, Players Only Holdings, recently laid the foundation stone for a $ 50 million manufacturing and training facility in Detroit Michigan. Another former NBA player, Kevin Durant, used his company Thirty Five Ventures to partner with Weedmaps to tackle the stigma against cannabis.

News that runner Sha’Carri Richardson tested positive for cannabis, leading to her disqualification from the Tokyo Olympics, also made headlines around the world. The uproar has garnered intense support for their situation from many sources, including the White House and the US Anti-Doping Agency and US state lawmakers.

Tennessee Congressman Steven Cohen joked that there was only one case in which cannabis was a performance enhancing substance. “Marijuana is not a performance-enhancing drug unless you compete in the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest on July 4th,” Cohen said in July.

Other sports organizations have also started easing restrictions on cannabis use. In April, the National Football League announced that it would no longer conduct cannabis testing in the off-season. In December 2019, the Major League Baseball Association announced that it would remove cannabis from its list of abusive drugs and continue to test athletes only for opioids and cocaine.