Why can't America defend Brittney Griner like she owns the vaporizers?

March 17, 2022

Why can’t America defend Brittney Griner like she owns the vaporizers?

The Haymaker is Leafly Senior Editor Bruce Barcott’s opinion column on cannabis news and culture.

Tomorrow marks the first full month of WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner’s incarceration in Russia. Unfortunately, it may not be her last month behind bars.

With each passing day, the Russian invasion of Ukraine grows bloodier, hostilities between the US and Russia grow more nasty, and Griner’s path to freedom becomes more and more difficult to imagine.

Meanwhile, American media coverage of Griner has begun to revolve around a tale of innocent captivity. CNN recently dubbed her arrest “the boldest state hostage-taking imaginable.” The Washington Post quoted a former US ambassador to Poland as suggesting that the two-time Olympic gold medalist “could be blamed for the crime and targeted.”

“It would be like the Russians to do this,” he added.

Could Griner have been founded by Russian officials? Certainly. Nations hostile to the United States have been known to trick visiting Americans for political influence. But these victims are typically journalists or religious missionaries, nuisances in the eyes of the state. Griner is a superstar athlete who plays for a team that is the pride of Russian basketball. In three of the last five seasons, Griner has led UMMC Ekaterinburg to the EuroLeague Women’s Championship.

National media must distance WNBA star from cannabis to defend them. This is the old-school drug war stigma in action.

So it’s strange to see this American media bend over backwards to portray Griner as a victim of government insidiousness. Hidden in their reports is an unspoken assumption that Griner, a seasoned pro athlete, would never dream of using or traveling with vape cartridges. It’s as if CNN, the Washington Post, and ESPN had to distance Griner from cannabis in order to defend it.

Here’s what almost nobody’s talking about: There’s a real possibility that Griner owned the vape carts the Russians claim they found in their luggage. But delving into that notion is seen as treacherous, playing into the hands of the Russians and smearing the reputation of a basketball and social justice hero.

And that, my friends, is the good old-fashioned stigma of the drug war in action.

Pro Athletes Are Eager to Adopt Cannabis, But Are the Leagues Listening?

The latest on Brittney Griner’s situation

News of Griner’s arrest first broke on March 5. However, later reports indicate that she was first detained by agents of Russia’s Federal Customs Service at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on February 17, a week before Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

A statement from the Russian Customs Service, reported in The New York Times, claimed that an inspection of Griner’s luggage “confirmed the presence of vaporizers containing specifically smelling liquid, and an expert determined that the liquid was cannabis oil (hash oil), which is a narcotic substance.” In Russia, bringing hash oil into the country is a crime punishable by 10 years in prison.

WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner was arrested in Russia last month at a Moscow airport after a search of her luggage discovered e-cigarette cartridges. Footage released on Saturday shows the WNBA star going through security at a Moscow airport and having her luggage searched. pic.twitter.com/Tuubab8Oko

— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 6, 2022

Griner’s advocates are working behind the scenes to secure her release. Congressman Colin Allred, a member of Congress from Texas, has contacted US State Department officials. (Griner grew up in Houston and attended college at Baylor University in Waco.) Rep. Sheila Lee, representing Houston, raised Griner’s case with President Biden earlier this week. But with U.S. and NATO officials scrambling to help Ukraine — without triggering World War III — the plight of a lone American involved in a border weed incident may not be the country’s top priority Oval Office.

Many angles to this story

There are so many dynamics at play in Griner’s case that it’s hard to know where to begin. There’s the fact that top players like Griner, Breanna Stewart, Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird can earn four times their WNBA salary by playing for Russian teams in the offseason – some of which are owned by Vladimir Putin’s oligarch cronies.

There’s the plight of a player like Griner, an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ rights who lives and works in a country that has banned the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations.” Under the vague guise of this cruel law, Griner’s own marriage to her wife, Cherelle, could be viewed as a criminal act.

Add to that the current geopolitical conflict surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has trapped Griner behind enemy lines at the worst possible moment.

All of these points of view have been raised — by CNN, by the Post, by national sports platforms, and by local Texas television news networks.

Do you know what hasn’t been addressed? The hemp.

Fact: Professional athletes use cannabis

Look, we all see the world through the lens of our own interests and experiences. The Washington Post looks at Brittany Griner and sees politics. ESPN watches Griner and watches sports. Leafly sees a professional athlete who, like many others, may be using cannabis to manage her mental and physical health.

But why are we the only outlet considering cannabis?

Serious. On our website and podcast, Josiah Hesse, author of a book on athletes who use cannabis, wrote that over 80% to 90% of athletes in some sports use cannabis before, after and sometimes during competition. Former Denver Nuggets star Kenyon Martin once estimated that 85% of all NBA players use cannabis. Hesse found that athletes use cannabis to rest, recover, and maintain their mental and physical health during a busy work season. Many of them turn to cannabis to protect their health from the ravages of opioids or other liver-destroying drugs.

Why should we assume WNBA players are any different?

Brittney Griner Isn’t Alone: Here’s Why Pro Athletes Are Using Cannabis

life in the rule of law

Consider it. Brittney Griner lives and works most of the year in Phoenix, Arizona. Last fall, she took part in the WNBA Finals with Phoenix Mercury, where they lost to Chicago Sky. That long final run was followed by a year in which she played a difficult, Covid-plagued EuroLeague season for Yekaterinburg and then won gold with Team USA at the Tokyo Olympics. The previous year, Griner had pulled out of the WNBA’s Covid bubble to address her own physical and mental health issues.

In Arizona, cannabis products have been legal for all adults since January 2021. Is it crazy to imagine that she could have found mental or physical relief by using legal cannabis? Honestly, it’s kind of crazy to imagine that she didn’t.

Those of us who enjoy cannabis in legal states know many things that people living in prohibition states don’t. We know it’s easy to forget just how insanely illegal cannabis still is in other states and countries – because in a legal state, cannabis is as commonplace as beer, wine or Advil.

In most states, TSA agents no longer even check for cannabis at airports. If Griner had kept a few vape cartridges in her toilet bag alongside a toothbrush, tweezers, and ibuprofen — like a normal adult — when traveling to away games during the WNBA season, she might have forgotten that they were crossing an international border with them would the same kit could land them in jail.

Flying with CBD? TSA says it’s cool

It happens. It happened to friends of mine. It even happened to me once, years ago. As my fellow passengers prepared to land in Toronto, I remembered a handful of gummies I stowed in my backpack to help me sleep on the plane. Result: Her husband enjoyed a leisurely stroll down 416 that afternoon.

This confuses those of us who live in legal states and countries. Banning cannabis makes no sense. Millions of people – including professional athletes – enjoy it every day in good health.

Good people and great athletes smoke marijuana

And yet, when that joy spills out into the open, institutions like CNN, the Washington Post, and ESPN turn their backs — and worse. An “expert” quoted by CNN framed the vape-wagon allegation as libelous. “This is reported as if people take these allegations seriously,” he said. “I think it’s a huge mistake to report these allegations as if they are true or even likely to be true.”

In other words, to consider the possibility that Brittney Griner actually picked up a couple of vape carts on a business trip is to besmirch her reputation and play into the hands of those dirty Russians.

There is a stigmatization behind this opinion. As notorious cannabis obsessive Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s first attorney general, once put it, “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

Last but not least, Brittney Griner’s predicament could help some Americans see the truth: Good people smoke marijuana.

I go on. Millions of good people — and great athletes — enjoy marijuana. This also applies to people who may not be so good. And you know what? Bad people shouldn’t be thrown in jail for marijuana either. Let’s defend Brittney Griner and cannabis. Because no one deserves to be arrested for taking care of their health or for bringing a little more joy into their lives.

Bruce Barcott

Leafly Senior Editor Bruce Barcott oversees news, investigations and feature projects. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and the author of Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America.

Check out Bruce Barcott’s articles

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