By Duke London

 

As law enforcement agencies and auto clubs around the world try to figure out the best way to test for marijuana impairment in drivers, the Olympics seem to have it figured out.

The World Anti-Doping Agency, in charge of regulating drug tests for all Olympic sports worldwide, made major changes to the way they tested for marijuana all the way back in 2013. While marijuana was still banned for use during competition, the WADA cared very little if athletes used it outside the window of the Olympic games, and still don’t.

To reflect their new ideology, the WADA increased the threshold for a positive cannabis test from 15 nanograms per milliliter to 150 ng/ml. This dramatic change would, in theory, eliminate positive tests for people who had used marijuana in the weeks leading up to the games, rather focusing on athletes that used near or during competition. In the 2012 Olympics, only four of the 2,776 in-competition tests conducted came back positive for marijuana according to the US Anti-Doping Agency, who conducted the tests before the London games.

“Our information suggests that many cases do not involve game or event-day consumption. The new threshold level is an attempt to ensure that in-competition use is detected and not use during the days and weeks before competition,” said WADA spokesperson Ben Nichols.

Unfortunately, the change comes too little too late for athletes like Ross Rebagliati, the Canadian snowboarder who had his gold medal suspended after testing positive for what he called secondhand smoke. Rebagliati clocked in at 17.8 ng/ml back in 1998 at the Nagano games, well below today’s limit, yet still faced backlash the rest of his career. Now Rebagliati embraces cannabis culture completely, even starting his own marijuana products company called — you guessed it, Ross’ Gold.

While many drugs make their way onto the International Olympic Committee’s banned substances list for performance-enhancing qualities, marijuana was first added for its illegality in most of the world. Beyond marijuana’s legal standing across the globe, many officials believed smoking marijuana would hurt the “spirit of the sport,” which is why it still remains on the banned list. The WADA uses three guidelines to decide which drugs are to be banned:

performance enhancement, danger to an athlete’s health, and violation of the spirit of sport

Now that much of the public stigma of marijuana has dissipated and marijuana poses minimal health risks, the WADA must decide how much weight it still wants to place on a positive marijuana test, if they even want to test for it at all. On this very subject, NORML’s recently-resigned Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said, “So they kind of ask the question … if we really don’t believe overtly that this is causing people to game the system by developing greater athletic skills, shouldn’t we really revisit this.”

“It’s kind of hard to imagine that cannabis should be thrown into that mixture (of banned drugs) unless it is still viewed as a moral turpitude,” St. Pierre added. “Society doesn’t seem to view it anymore as a moral turpitude.”

It’s hard to ignore that many Olympic athletes use marijuana as either a pain reliever or relaxation method, as many people with strenuous occupations do. Two Olympic legends, in particular, Jamaican track superstar Usain Bolt and American gold medal hoarder Michael Phelps, have both admitted to using marijuana in the past, which clearly hasn’t hurt them too severely — or the “spirit” of their respective sports.