The 12-month suspension given to Nick Diaz by the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) for testing positive for marijuana metabolites is unjust.
Although purchasing and consuming marijuana is illegal in many places in the United States and Canada, it is perfectly legal for Diaz to consume the substance in his home state of California because he possesses a medical marijuana card, prescribed to him by his doctor to help him deal with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Of all the things athletes have done on which to soil their names or their sport, or to gain an unfair competitive advantage, legal consumption of medical marijuana seems like a rather tame offence.
Take for example the recent news that UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones was charged with a DUI (driving under the influence) after crashing his Bentley into a utility pole during the early hours of the morning Saturday in New York.
What Jones did is far worse than what Diaz did.
This is not a dig at Jones either (although it is in no way condoning his actions). People make mistakes and it’s how they respond to those mistakes that speaks to their character, but drinking while driving results in thousands of deaths across North America every year. Smoking marijuana does not.
Jones was criminally charged and could have potentially injured himself or others, where Diaz did nothing illegal.
Without getting into a bunch of legal jargon, the commission suspended Diaz because it believed he lacked credibility — it ruled that he did not accurately fill out a medical questionnaire prior to his UFC 143 interim title fight with Carlos Condit. The 28-year-old and his representatives argued against this.
Perhaps the commission had no other choice since this was the Stockton, Calif., native’s second positive test for marijuana. In 2007, following a memorable win over Takanori Gomi at Pride 33, the NSAC suspended Diaz for six months. Back then, Diaz did not have a medical marijuana licence and told the NSAC he would stop using the substance. Diaz admitted in Monday’s hearing that he never stopped.
What’s different this time around, though, is Diaz only tested positive for marijuana metabolites, whereas following the Gomi fight he tested positive for THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis.
Diaz’s lawyer Ross Goodman argued that the NSAC could not suspend his client this time around for violating its policies since marijuana metabolites do not constitute a prohibited substance.
But in watching the commission’s ruling on Diaz, it didn’t really seem like they were listening to Diaz, Goodman or their arguments. Instead, they seemed personally insulted by Diaz’s broken promise over five years ago (which is somewhat understandable) and they asked him about when he first began smoking pot and why he did so as a teen, which was absolutely irrelevant to this case.
The majority of people in the MMA community believe the sentence was harsh and Diaz’s trainer and manager Cesar Gracie, not surprisingly, was one of the outspoken advocates for his student.
@ufc Get drunk and wreck cars or do steroids between fights is OK. Smoke weed legally between fights and NSAC throws the book at you
— Cesar Gracie (@CesarGracieBJJ) May 21, 2012
In MMA, abuse of testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) is a much bigger issue than marijuana use. TRT is literally a performance enhancer, even though in many cases it’s prescribed by a doctor as well. Higher levels of testosterone allow athletes to train harder.
The fact is marijuana does not give an athlete any physical advantage. It does not help muscles recover faster, it does not help you lift more weights, and it certainly does not make you move more quickly.
Most sports officials don’t consider marijuana to be a performance-enhancing drug either, but ban it because it is illegal in many places.
Part of the reason steroids are illegal is because they are harmful to those that use them. Marijuana, on the other hand, has never been proven to be a harmful substance; that’s why so many people around the world use it medicinally.
However longtime UFC commentator Joe Rogan, who is an advocate for the legalization of marijuana, believes the plant is used by many athletes to enhance their state of mind in training.
“I think it is a performance-enhancing drug. If it wasn’t, a huge majority of jiu-jitsu guys wouldn’t be using it before they train. A lot of Brazilian guys use marijuana before they train. A lot of American jiu-jitsu guys use it before they train. And they don’t do it because it hurts them; they do it because it helps them,” Rogan told Ariel Helwani on the MMA Hour back in February.
“I think if testosterone is legal, you can easily make the argument that marijuana should be legal under a doctor’s prescription. I do believe that they’re both performance-enhancing substances. I think that testosterone is in fact, more of a performance-enhancer.”
Marijuana use is far from a rare occurrence in professional sports.
Remember when Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati won a gold medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics only to have it taken away after he tested positive for marijuana? That decision was eventually overturned with an appeal because it was deemed Rebagliati did not intentionally ingest marijuana nor did it enhance his performance.
The most famous case of a high-profile athlete speaking out in favour of the medicinal use of the oft-banned plant is NFL running back Ricky Williams. The former Heisman Trophy winner has been suspended and fined on several occasions for testing positive. Williams isn’t the only pro-pot NFLer though.
Two-time Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboy Mark Stepnoski is one of the more outspoken professional athletes that are marijuana advocates.
In fact, after his retirement from the NFL, Stepnoski has spent time as the president of the Texas chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
Stepnoski admitted to “responsible use” of marijuana during his NFL career and in 2009 told Forbes.com, “After a game you need something to relax … I’d rather smoke than take painkillers.”
The former Pro Bowl centre is one of a large number of players to indulge themselves in Mary Jane.
In fact, there are almost too many cases of NFL players, past and present, using marijuana to keep track of. So many in fact there’s enough to put together an NFL All-Weed Team.
Handfuls of other famous athletes have been caught smoking marijuana, illegally mind you, but haven’t quite been punished the way Diaz has been. Even 14-time Olympic gold medal winner Michael Phelps, essentially America’s poster boy for athletics — he was literally on the cover of Wheaties — was caught smoking in 2009.
Whether or not you agree with Diaz’s use of marijuana, or whether you’re a fan of his brash antics inside and outside the Octagon, he is unquestionably one of the most talented mixed martial artists in the sport. Fans will not get to see him compete until February 2013 at the very earliest if he chooses to continue his MMA career.
It’s a shame he received this punishment for an issue like legally consuming medical marijuana.
It could be time for athletic commissions and the World Anti-Doping Agency to review their stance on medical marijuana in sports.
POLL:
Do you think Nick Diaz should have been suspended?
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