Pot will get you ousted from the Olympics, but is it performance enhancing?

Tristin Hopper - thegrowthop.com Posted 6 years ago
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When Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati was stripped of his 1998 Olympic gold medal after testing positive for marijuana, comedian Robin Williams quickly emerged as one of his strongest defenders.

“The only way it’s a performance enhancing drug is if there’s a big f—ing Hershey bar at the end of the run,” Williams said in his 2002 Live on Broadway special.

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Rebagliati’s medal was subsequently returned and he’s since become the founder of two cannabis companies, but the prohibition remains. Pot can still get you kicked out of the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games, the World Cup and any other sports event overseen by the Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Marijuana is only banned “in-competition,” which means that athletes can smoke as much of it as they want provided it’s out of their system by game day. Nevertheless, athletes continue to regularly have their dreams shattered by traces of THC showing up in a blood test.

Most notably, U.S. judo Olympian Nick Delpopolo was humiliatingly sent home from the London 2012 Olympics after he accidentally ate a pot brownie.

Despite Robin Williams’ claims, anti-doping authorities do indeed consider cannabis to be a performance enhancing drug.

Pot won’t make anybody run faster or jump higher, but the reasoning is that it reduces inhibition and can focus concentration.

ross rebagliati 1 Pot will get you ousted from the Olympics, but is it performance enhancing?

Ross Rebagliati, who briefly lost his Olympic gold medal for smoking weed, which he indeed smokes a lot.

Matt Fedoruk, the science director of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, said in 2013 that some drugs make the list simply because they affect “pain or confidence” as well as “things that are a bit more difficult to measure or define analytically.”

On this point, Ross Rebagliati would seem to agree. “You get in a zone where you can give it a 110%,” he told Postmedia in 2015 when pitching his medical pot company, Ross’ Gold.

However, alcohol – another drug famous for affecting pain and confidence – is notably absent from the WADA list, except in archery and sports where you have to be behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. Even then, an athlete has to exceed 0.10 per cent blood alcohol concentration to be considered a doper.

The World Anti-Doping Agency will also ban a substance if it’s deemed to be harmful to health or if it “violates the spirit of sport.” Cannabis is considered to violate both of these conditions.

Marijuana may be one of the tamer drugs, but it still has just enough links to psychosis and lung diseases to credibly be on WADA’s radar as something unhealthy.

As for the “spirit of sport” part, cannabis is still illegal in most of the world, so most athletes can’t partake without breaking the law. And the sponsors who fund most of the world’s sports generally frown on it.

When legendary swimmer Michael Phelps was photographed smoking from a bong in 2009, the immediate effect was his suspension as a spokesman for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.

“Michael’s most recent behavior is not consistent with the image of Kellogg,” said a company spokesperson at the time.

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