I promise I’ll write more about this later, but:
PEOPLE. Can we please, for the love of all things good and holy, get over this idea that marijuana is somehow a performance enhancing drug? When was the last time ANYONE got high and did anything except make weird art, eat too many Cheetos, giggle uncontrollably, and contemplate the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything?
This irritates me every time drug testing comes up. If you’re going to test for performance enhancing drugs, hell, a scoop of C4 is more likely to do me good than smoking weed is. Test me for caffeine, if you absolutely must (but my blood is probably 75% caffeine anyway so I mean… I’d probably fail that drug test) but weed is really, really not the issue here.
Sigh. Sorry everyone, my Californian is showing. If you need me, I’ll be over here in my yoga class, becoming one with my intentions and kumbaya-ing around the campfire.
I absolutely agree that weed is in no way performance enhancing. I used to smoke a bit back in college and all I wanted to do was stare at the ceiling. I haven’t smoked in years but if I did I wouldn’t smoke before training or competing anymore than I would drink a nice relaxing glass of wine right before getting on the mats. But if you are drug testing, you might as well test for everything.
Marijuana can be prescribed to ease pain. It would be a banned substance in the same way that hydrocodone is. I don’t think anyone’s comparing it to eating horse meat as far as it helping performance, but there are a lot of reasons to ban certain substances beyond the claim that they would somehow make you stronger/faster/better.
An individual using substances to cope with pain would be more resistant to submissions giving them an advantage over a clean counterpart. There’s also the argument that they may be more susceptible to serious injury as people seem to tap when they feel pain instead of when they identify a structural issue (re: why leg locks are “dangerous”).
Whether these claims are valid or not, as long other pain killers are banned and/or marijuana remains a scheduled drug it’s fair to be on a drug test which checks for other illegal substances which don’t really have performance enhancing effects.
Here’s my problem with having THC as a scheduled drug:
1. In some places in the US, pot has been legalized as a recreational substance, and is perfectly legal to use for the fun of it, a la alcohol. We don’t test for alcohol as a PED, so it seems disingenuous to test for THC.
2. The half life of opioids (Vicodin, morphine, hydrocodone, heroin, opium, etc) in the bloodstream is days at most. The half life of THC in the bloodstream is much longer. I could ingest THC in any form weeks before a competition and still come up positive on a test.
3. I don’t have scientific evidence to back this up, and I’m too lazy to look right now, but I suspect that if someone is stoned enough to not feel an arm bar, then they’d be practically comatose. Smoking weeks or even the night before a comp isn’t going to give anyone superhuman pain tolerance, and it certainly won’t make them incapable of understanding that if they don’t tap their arm will break.
All that being said: no one should be getting on the competition mats in an altered state of consciousness, ever. If the committee suspects someone is stoned before they get on the mat, then yeah, kick them from the tournament. But the thing that’s rubbing me the wrong way is that it’s none of their business what I’m doing in my personal time in the weeks leading up to the tournament. Are they going to check my Facebook to make sure I wasn’t out drinking?
I’m not writing this as someone who smokes all the time. You’ll never find me wandering into a tournament stoned, or training on anything but excessive amounts of caffeine. But as an individual,and someone with a keen interest in privacy law/policy, this irks me. I feel like it’s an invasion into my life that is unnecessary– it doesn’t make the tournament more fair, it’s just a way to hold athletes to an antiquated moral standard regarding this particular substance.
It’s still a federally controlled substance…isn’t the USADA a federal group? Just because Washington state legalized it doesn’t actually mean it’s legal. I believe the status is currently defined as “something lawyers get rich off of”.
Whether or not WADA checks for weed is something I have never gotten a straight answer on.
As for performance enhancing, while I disagree with Mr. Rogan(on a lot of things…like what an uchimata is…) there was a fight not too long ago where one of the competitors tested for a level of THC that was comically high(the assumption is that he shot up a purified form of it right before the competition) and the doctor believed that it was done for pain suppressing reasons. With experience you can overcome the adverse affects, just like you can with opioids.
That said I completely agree, it should be in the same category as alcohol(which I think they actually do test for…)
And no, it does not enhance your training or increase your intellect, nor is it either “the devil’s drug” nor “the life plant”(and I have a hard time not thinking less of the people who referred to it as that). Or at least not beyond what anxiety meds would do.
Ritalin on the other hand…
I believe it was the calming effect marijuana possesses that led to it being on the doping list. It slows down your heartbeat a tad, even several days after ingestion. All in all the effect is fairly small and probably neglegible for a well-conditioned athlete when it comes to endurance. The effects it has, however, are relevant for activities were breath control, a steady hand, and minimal interference from the heartbeat are relevant. Shooting disciplines for example, where competitors effectively fire their rifle between two heartbears.
That said, I consider marijuana rather useless outside those particular disciplines, not considering extreme cases such as lcpdx mentioned. Reconsidering its current place on the doping list might be something to consider for a good number of disciplines.