College Football: So What If Players Are Smoking Marijuana?

ESPN released a magazine story by Mark Schlabach today detailing the prevalence of marijuana use (and, in some instances, distribution) in college football. It's not particularly breathless or hysterical, so we won't cast aspersions, but the message is clear: There's too much pot in sports, and many programs don't even care enough about it to test everybody or even give out mandatory suspensions.

Also, there's a Photoshop of a football as a lit blunt and another one with its laces in a marijuana leaf shape. "What if Michael Vick were white" has just turned into "What if this football were made of drugs."

You should click through just to see them. Not kidding.

At any rate, according to the article, we've got 22.3 percent of NCAA athletes admitting to marijuana usage and 26.7 percent of football players smoking up. Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon believes usage is increasing in prevalence on campus and sounds the alarm thusly:

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"It became apparent to me that we had a lot of student-athletes who were looking at the testing protocol as a game of Russian roulette," he says. "As long as you weren't one of the ones that was chosen for testing in a very infrequent cycle, then you had a high likelihood to use drugs, smoke pot and not get caught because you didn't get tested." 

Brandon instituted a more aggressive drug-testing program, which screens athletes more frequently and punishes offenders more severely. "Student-athletes are going to be no different than other students in getting caught up in marijuana, unless there is clarity around the fact it's wrong and there are consequences if you do it," he says.

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Now, marijuana possession is illegal, and selling it is sensationally illegal. You get caught and you're probably getting arrested and embarrassing the program. You fail a drug test and you're probably getting suspended and embarrassing the program. Those are the consequences. 

I respect Mr. Brandon, but let's make this 100 percent clear: I do not care if student-athletes or anybody else decides to smoke pot.

Do I smoke pot? No. Do I think everyone should smoke pot? No. Do I think more athletes should smoke pot? No. Do I think fewer athletes should smoke pot? No. I think as many should that want to—and can accept the consequences, because there are some. They're just probably not what you think. Let's go down the line.

- But it's illegal! First, we'll set aside the massively problematic enforcement of the drug laws from a racial standpoint; those effects are more often seen in urban areas than college campuses and thus aren't particularly relevant to this discussion.

There are negative consequences of marijuana sale and usage, but those (arrests, suspensions, the money eventually going to violent drug lords) stem from the drug's illegality itself. So I don't care if this specific law gets broken. Arrests and suspension are the risk these athletes take, but they ought to be allowed to decide about that risk themselves.

This is America, the land of the free, after all—and lest we forget, willfully breaking harmful and arbitrary laws in the name of freedom is sort of how this country was founded in the first place.

- But it's bad for you! Notice, if you will, the dearth of consequences that Brandon cites above as to the actual use of the marijuana itself. Schlabach doesn't cite any either. It's not addictive (well, technically it is, but the reason nobody goes through withdrawal is because it comes out of one's system so slowly, the brain can handle it).

It clearly doesn't hamper conditioning and athletic performance, as Oregon's widespread usage and Michael Phelps' bong rips can attest. It's a relatively effective painkiller without the enormous and potentially fatal side effects of other legal options. Would you really have your star tailback deal with a sore ankle at night with something that starts with "oxy-" instead of a joint?

But it makes you dumb and lazy! Now, for one, the sheer prevalence of athletes using weed and not flunking out of school or giving up on the sport should indicate how problematic this line of thinking is. But it might have that effect on an athlete or two. Maybe one of them goes full Afroman and doesn't study his playbook or Chemistry 201 and gets high instead. Football's competitive enough that if someone's not working hard for his starting spot, someone behind him's going to work his way onto the field instead. That's a self-fixing problem.

But my burnout cousin smokes weed and he's just the worst and he owes me money! I guarantee you that if marijuana didn't exist, that burnout cousin of yours would be finding other ways to get messed up and not accomplish anything. Some people just aren't "doers," and a lot of them make the ennui of not doing anything go away by smoking. If that means marijuana should be illegal, I shudder to think what should happen to the Internet.

So yeah. I don't care if football players smoke marijuana. Feel free to chime in in the comments; I have a feeling one or two of you might have some opinions on the matter.