"It’s college – everyone experiments a little." This oft-repeated trope could soon have real-world consequences for today’s student-athletes.
The NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports recently "signaled its support" for the college athletics governing body to remove marijuana (THC) from the NCAA’s list of banned substances and instead focus testing only on "performance-enhancing drugs."
That’s right, the governing body for college athletics might soon be telling their students – most of whom physiologically still have developing brains – that it’s OK to do drugs.
They appear to be willing to create this permissive environment despite a mountain of medical and scientific data that’s making it increasingly clear the impacts of today’s high-potency pot products, including vapes and candies, are even worse than we thought, particularly for our young people.
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In even considering this risky if not outright dangerous move, the NCAA is choosing to ignore the advice of every major medical association and surgeon general that today’s THC-laced drugs are damaging to the brain. Marijuana isn’t the drug it was a generation ago. It’s an industrialized, highly potent product that is anything but "recreational."
Studies over the last number of years, including one released last month, link THC use to significant physical and psychological impacts. This is particularly true when taken in the higher doses often found in today’s concentrates, edibles and vaping products.
Medical science has shown there is a direct association between the frequency of marijuana use and higher THC potency with the development of drug addiction, IQ loss, motor skill loss and mental health issues, including psychosis, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and suicidality.
The NCAA would be endangering their athletes and sending a terrible message to all college students and college sports fans with this move. Ending the testing regime for student athletes when it comes to THC will doubtlessly encourage more use.
The marijuana industry has already spent enormous sums to reduce perceptions of risk and harm, especially among young people. Young people’s perceptions of harm for frequent marijuana use has dropped more than 50 points in recent years, while youth use of the drug is now at an all-time high.
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Cannabis use disorder, also known as addiction to marijuana, has become increasingly more prevalent among college-aged Americans. For all the talk about how pot is not addictive, in 2021, 4.8 million individuals between the ages of 18 and 25 had a marijuana use disorder, accounting for 41% of past-year users in that age group. Moreover, full legalization is also associated with a 25% increase in marijuana use disorder in youth.
Though the addiction-for-profit industry and its partners, Big Alcohol and Big Tobacco, like to downplay the risks of marijuana, the drug caused more than 70,000 individuals younger than 18 to have marijuana-related emergency department visits in 2021.
The risks aren’t just for users. More young people are driving under the influence of marijuana too. In 2021, 10.67 million people admitted to driving under the influence of marijuana, including 1.36 million who were between the ages of 16 and 20. There were 2.41 times more minors on the road under the influence of marijuana than were under the influence of alcohol.
All of that should give serious pause to college administrators, athletic directors and coaches.
It is worth noting that the World Anti-Doping Agency continues to prohibit the in-competition use of cannabinoids, a position they most recently upheld in September 2022. Their three criteria for prohibiting a substance is that it has the potential to enhance performance, it threatens the health of the user, and its use violates the spirit of sport.
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The NCAA’s position would be at odds with the policy in place for the Olympics and international competitions, potentially placing American athletes at a competitive disadvantage.
But there’s another side of this policy that should be deeply concerning for student-athletes, especially those from communities of color. Pot shops in America’s cities have their heaviest concentrations in lower-income and minority neighborhoods.
Despite supporters of legalization heralding commercial drugs and pot shops as social justice, only 4% of commercial marijuana businesses have any Black ownership. It’s a predatory industry. College athletics should be encouraging clean living, not capitulating to societal or commercial pressure.
The NCAA has long claimed it looks out for the best interests of the sports it governs from the perspective of the students-athletes. Opening the door to today’s high-potency THC products and increased drug use won’t bring these young people success on the field or in the classroom.
Nobody wins with drugs in the game. Let’s hope NCAA reconsiders its position and looks out for the best interests of the young people who are its present and its future.
