Roger Goodell doesn't want you to read this.

[HairOnFire]

Weeding through NFL pot policy

By Mark Kiszla

Denver Post Staff Columnist

Article Last Updated: 05/23/2007 11:53:04 PM MDT

Let's be blunt.

If the NFL suspended every player who smoked marijuana, then on any given Sunday the number of athletes making touchdowns would be reduced significantly by the blunt-burners sent home to bake brownies.

In a game smeared with too many ugly headlines involving lawyers, guns and bail money, doesn't the league have worse things to worry about than if a player is using marijuana?

"It's crazy," Broncos running back Travis Henry said Wednesday, sitting comfortably on a picnic table at team headquarters and talking frankly about being suspended four games by the league in 2005 for smoking pot. "My opinion on it? I think a lot of people do it. A lot of people do it, but if you get caught, that's who is going to get fingered and pointed out. They're going to make an example of you."

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell seems bent on cleaning up his game, booting players who are not good Boy Scouts.

Bravo for him.

But if the league wants to wage a war on drugs, let's concentrate on steroids or human growth hormone and not worry about spilled bong water. Unless a linebacker is plopped on the couch and listening to Radiohead, it's hard to imagine marijuana as a performance-enhancing drug.

In dangerous times, when Chicago Bears defender Tank Johnson was allowed to travel to the Super Bowl after being accused of storing a small arsenal of guns under his roof, should big brother really be concerned about which NFL players are blasting the chronic?

"C'mon, let's be serious," said Henry, who believes NFL officials know player use of marijuana is far from uncommon. "I know they know."

Of course, marijuana is not legal, despite what your nostrils might have suggested the last time you attended a concert at Red Rocks.

But in an era when baseball cannot pin steroid use on Barry Bonds and there's tainted blood staining the Tour de France, it seems maybe football should view Ricky Williams and his ganja habit as a dopey joke rather than a serious threat.

We bring this up because, fair or not, our local NFL franchise has marijuana issues of its own.

The Broncos might not be America's team. More like Jamaica's team, if you ask the hecklers destined to serenade Denver's arrival to stadiums across the country with renditions of "Legalize It."

In addition to showing Henry the money as a free agent, coach Mike Shanahan also drafted Florida defensive lineman Jarvis Moss and Marcus Thomas, who both got in trouble with marijuana as members of the Gators.

In a country where studies suggest more than 50 million Americans have tried marijuana, I say let the first baby boomer who has never inhaled cast the first stone.

But I also hear the complaints of concerned parents who think football heroes should be held to a higher standard.

"In my case, I got caught. So I'll deal with it. Gotta walk a straight line. I'm with it. I love football so much as to not (smoke). I'm not bitter," said Henry, who has lived for two years under the scrutiny of the NFL's substance-abuse program, which carries the real threat of a harsher punishment for a repeat offense.

"Life ain't fair. But I'm not hating on nobody. I ain't mad at 'em. I made my bed. I'm laying in it. I know this organization is counting on me to walk that straight line. Shanahan went out on a limb for me."

Trouble seems to be stalking the Broncos of late. Or has the team taken too many foolish risks?

After Denver receiver David Kircus was charged with second-degree assault for allegedly beating a man during a party at 3:20 a.m., there will be no rush to judgment here.

But it was a sad reminder.

Did the murder of cornerback Darrent Williams not teach the Broncos it's dangerous out in the street?

Might be safer for a football player to stay at home, lock the doors and burn a blunt.

[DC_Bengals_Fan]

"But if the league wants to wage a war on drugs, let's concentrate on steroids or human growth hormone and not worry about spilled bong water."

Um...they do have a steroids policy. 4 games for the first offense seems pretty serious to me. HGH is banned too, but kind of impossible to test for when the union fights blood testing.

I'm really not sure what the point of the article was, since it kind of rambles and doesn't have a coherent thesis (perhaps the writer was batch testing some of the materials discussed in the article?). Is he accusing the NFL of using pot as a diversionary tactic? If so, wouldn't they have swept the Shawne Merriman thing under the rug? Seems to me the NFL is doing its damndest to get drugs out of the league, and to its credit, it's making an effort to root out recreational drugs too.

If the author were paying attention (ie, not stoned), he'd notice that pot isn't banned on the basis that it's performance enhancing. If it were, it would probably get the 4-game minimum too. As it is, you have to get busted, what, 3 times for pot before you're suspended? So the author's premise doesn't hold water. d

Seems to me the league is doing it's best. It's testing for anything you can catch with a piss test. HGH they can't catch without blood testing, which the union refuses to do. So I'd change your title (or is that the article's title?), Hair. *Gene Upshaw* doesn't want you to read this.

[GapControl]

just curious, DC, how many beers or cocktails have you drank this week?

[DC_Bengals_Fan]

just curious, DC, how many beers or cocktails have you drank this week?

Not seeing the relevance, but about 10. Incidentally, none of them were in my system while driving.

[GapControl]

didnt think they would be while you were driving... but in my personal experience i would say 10 alcoholic drinks equals 2 average joints. so maybe you and the article writer are on equal footing.

[DC_Bengals_Fan]

didnt think they would be while you were driving... but in my personal experience i would say 10 alcoholic drinks equals 2 average joints. so maybe you and the article writer are on equal footing.

10 in a week ~ 1.5 per day = not intoxicated.

[HairOnFire]

So I'd change your title (or is that the article's title?), Hair.

Just for the record, I almost went with...."Weed the people, in order to form a most excellent union...."

I figured it was too wordy.

That said, I thought the article was interesting because it touched on several things I've written about for years. Namely, that steroid use is an example of a drug being used in a deliberate effort to gain a competitive advantage. And since that goes to the very heart & spirit of all sporting events I'd be in favor of a lifetime ban for those who violate the rule. And yeah, I'm talking about first-timers.

Because players like Merriman not only gain a short-term competitve advantage, but long-term benefits, too. Steroids are too often used to build bodies that are freakishly strong even amongst a vast pool of players who can all be described as freakishly strong. And you've got to be a little bit gullible to believe that a player like Merriman only used steroids on the one occasion when he failed a test.

Steroids and HGH also provide a player with an unfair advanatge in recovering from common training injuries. So it's a little bit "blue-sky-and-sunshine" to simply describe them as performance enhancing. Because that sounds like a good thing, right?

So let's call steroid users what they really are. Cheaters.

In regards to weed, you can argue that it's appropriate to ban players who repeatedly get caught smoking the chronic, but Ricky William's use of pot doesn't give him any competitive advantage, and thus isn't a threat to the very spirit of the game itself.

In addition, there are plenty of laws that players can and do break over and over again that don't bring the possibility of permanent banishment.

Ehhh?

[Bgal]

Weed is illegal. It doesn't matter if everyone smokes it, or if it's "safer" than other drugs. If you get caught smoking, you get some sort of punishment. Why is this so hard for everyone to understand?

I constantly hear people bitching about how they can't get a job (do to drug testing) because they smoke and how s**tty that is. What's s**tty is that they'd rather sit around, smoke, and bitch than actually stop and get a job. I know not every smoker is like this, but my area seems to be packed full with them.

When it comes to football steriods are without a doubt worse, and not surprisingly, the punishment is worse.

This article was pointless.

[GapControl]

weed, alcohol, sex, rock and roll, violence... blah blah blah... and so on. those things don`t keep people from getting jobs. some flaw in their personality leads them to choose repeatedly to do activities other than work.

i know first hand. i have a whole family of research subjects. harvard medical would be envious.

[HairOnFire]

Weed is illegal. It doesn't matter if everyone smokes it, or if it's "safer" than other drugs. If you get caught smoking, you get some sort of punishment. Why is this so hard for everyone to understand?

The idea that there would be SOME form of punishment isn't hard to understand at all. The idea that it can result in a player being banned from the NFL for life is a little harder to justify....for precisely the reason that you mentioned. It's everywhere.

Plus, it isn't performance enhancing.

And again, there are plenty of illegal acts that a player can repeatedly engage in that won't result in banishment so that argument only gets you so far.

Look at it this way. Ricky Williams use of pot harms nobody, doesn't impact the competitive balance, and allows him to be a productive member of society capable of earning millions of dollars. But ban him from the game and he becomes what?

Just another hippie yoga instructor, right?

[derekshank]

And again, there are plenty of illegal acts that a player can repeatedly engage in that won't result in banishment so that argument only gets you so far.

I agree with you in theory... but the list of illegal actions that don't result in league punishment is quickly decreasing under Goodell.