Mediame.guru

Espn Apr 30 2020

Ricky Williams smoked marijuana a few times in high school, and a couple of times when he played football for the University of Texas. But the first time he noticed the drug helped him relax was during his senior year of college.

"I had a really bad breakup with my girlfriend," Williams said. "And she started dating the quarterback, like the day after we broke up."

Williams' roommate noticed he was distraught, and suggested he smoke marijuana.

"I did," Williams said. "And that was the first time I noticed, 'Wow, this helps.'"

Williams, the 1998 Heisman Trophy winner, was drafted No. 5 overall by the Saints in the 1999 NFL draft. It wasn't until his second year in New Orleans that he said he began smoking on a regular basis. "I really used it as an aid to recovery," he said. "After busting my ass at practice, I'd come home and smoke a little bit, and I felt good. It helped me get up the next day, ready to go back to work."

Williams is best known today as a cautionary tale for the NFL's long-standing -- and harsh -- disciplinary system for players who smoke weed. Recently, the NFL and other professional sports leagues have loosened their marijuana policies to reflect society's changing attitudes. So it's fair to imagine how Williams' football career could have played out differently.

Instead, here is what happened: In March 2002, Williams was traded to the Miami Dolphins. Williams says he didn't know he would be tested for drugs during OTAs. "They told me the day before," Williams said. "But it was too late."

Williams tested positive for marijuana, and he entered the NFL's drug program. The league flew Williams to Atlanta, and he spent the day talking to three different psychiatrists. "And they decided ... that I had a problem," Williams said. He was assigned a drug counselor to meet with for an hour each week. He was tested for drugs nine times each month. If he ever left town, he had to call and tell the NFL where he was going.

"I just felt like a criminal," he said. "That was the hardest part about it."

Williams failed a second test. He was fined 4/17th of his salary. "That's when I decided I would retire," Williams said. "It wasn't even about the cannabis at that point in my life. I just felt like I had given my entire life to football, and it didn't feel very meaningful to me."

Listen: Former NFL RB Ricky Williams and ESPN's Emily Kaplan assess the new NFL CBA's changes to the league's drug policy, and break down cannabis policy reform across pro sports on the ESPN Daily podcast.

At age 27, Williams walked away from the sport and went on a spiritual journey. A year later, he wanted back in. "I realized I had to come back to the NFL to clear my name," he said. "To leave on better terms."

In 2006, while still with the Dolphins, he failed another drug test. Williams said it was not for marijuana, but because he already was flagged in the NFL's system, he was forced to sit out the entire season.

Williams still amassed 10,000 rushing yards over 11 seasons in his NFL career. But he missed two seasons -- both in prime years for a running back -- which can be traced back to one positive marijuana test his second year in the league.

"The punitive nature of the program," Williams said. "That was the biggest evil."

The marijuana stigma that plagued Williams' NFL career is eroding, if not gone entirely from an enforcement standpoint. In January, Illinois became the 11th state to legalize recreational marijuana. Now, of the 123 teams across MLB, the NBA, NHL and NFL, 50 play in states or provinces where recreational marijuana is legal (40.6%). Another 51 teams play in jurisdictions where medical marijuana is legal (41.5%). That's 82% of teams (101 of 123) that are playing in cities where a player can walk down the street, go into a dispensary, and legally purchase either recreational or medicinal marijuana -- just like they were buying a six pack of beer.

The only states in which any of the four major pro league teams play where there are no broad laws legalizing marijuana are Indiana, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.

Sports leagues have adapted. Last year, we wrote about the NHL's marijuana approach -- predicated on treatment, not punishment -- which at the time was the most progressive in professional sports. Today? It's actually the norm.

• The NFL ratified a new CBA in March with a drug policy quite similar to the NHL model. The NFL significantly raised the threshold for positive tests (from 35 nanograms to 150) and eliminated its previous window of testing, which spanned from April to August to the first two weeks of training camp. In other words, if players want to smoke weed in the offseason, they are free to do so. But most importantly: Players are no longer suspended solely for marijuana. If a player were to test positive, his case is reviewed by a panel of medical experts who determine if the player needs medical treatment. "Certainly, we see that society is changing its views, but views only change because key facts become more and more obvious to the people who make policy," NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith said.

• MLB and its union negotiated a new drug policy in December 2019 following Tyler Skaggs' death. While the new policy added testing for opioids, fentanyl and cocaine, plus synthetic weed -- with positive tests being referred to a treatment board -- cannabinoids were taken off the league's drugs of abuse list. That wasn't a huge deal for MLB players, who were only previously tested for marijuana if there was "reasonable cause." It was, however, monumental for minor leaguers, who were regularly tested and faced steep fines and suspensions -- including a 50-game ban for a first-time offense, 100 games for a second and a lifetime ban for the third strike. "The way the league had the rules set up, it was ridiculous," said longtime MLBPA agent Joshua Kusnick. "I can't even imagine how many guys' careers were ruined over marijuana. I personally had clients whose careers were derailed because of it. If you were a fringy prospect and you were popped for marijuana, you were released because teams didn't want to deal with it. And if you were released, you couldn't serve your suspension. So who is going to sign you if you had 50 games to wait?"

• The NBA's policy has remained the same -- and is now actually the harshest in North American professional sports. A first positive test means a player must enter the marijuana program. The second positive test calls for a $25,000 fine. The third infraction is a five-game suspension, and five more games are added to each ensuing violation (10 games for a fourth positive test, 15 games for a fifth, etc.). However, the NBA does not test players during the offseason, and the union and league agreed to not test players during the league's coronavirus hiatus. Commissioner Adam Silver, who has had ongoing discussions with the players association about the drug policy, addressed the complexities ahead of the 2019 NBA Finals interview with Yahoo Sports. "One of the things I've been talking more about in the last year is mental wellness of our players," Silver said. "And look, some guys are smoking pot just in the same way a guy would take a drink. And it's like whatever, 'Smoking pot, I'm just using it to come down a little bit or I just want to relax.' No big deal. No issue. And I think it's the reason why it has been legalized in a lot of states. And from that standpoint, if that were the only issue, maybe we're behind the times in our program. On the other hand, there's also guys in the league who are smoking a lot of pot. And then the question is, why are you smoking a lot of pot? And that's where mental wellness comes in. Because I've also talked directly to players who say, 'I'm smoking a lot of pot, because I have a lot of anxiety. And I'm struggling.'"

• Jerry Jones had long been vocal about changing the NFL's marijuana policy. And just because the Dallas Cowboys owner is typically outspoken on most topics, it doesn't mean his peers didn't quietly agree. From a pragmatic standpoint, owners want their players to be available. The NFL's long-standing drug policy often felt draconian. Williams was far from the only cautionary tale. Consider Cowboys defensive end Randy Gregory, who went 616 days between regular-season games because of suspensions.

  It raises the question: Why was it so harsh to begin with?

  "The weed policy in the NFL exists because it is purely a collective bargaining piece," said one current NFL agent. "That's it. That's the only place it has in the NFL."

  The NFL Players' Association had pushed the NFL to change the drug policy well before this year, but the NFL always insisted that it should be bargained. That meant there were only a few opportunities to do it, and players would have to concede something.

  The NFLPA asked to loosen marijuana penalties in 2011 CBA talks. However, the league insisted on adding human growth hormone testing, and the NFLPA didn't want that, so the issue remained moot. In 2014, both sides redid the drug policy. The NFL introduced HGH testing and relaxed some on marijuana penalties -- including increasing the threshold for a positive test -- but it still didn't go as far as the NFLPA wanted.

  It wasn't until this past CBA in 2020 that both sides agreed to a much more relaxed marijuana policy -- largely because it was part of an agreement that included a 17-game schedule (something the owners badly wanted). Sources say many people in the league office wanted to keep stringent marijuana testing -- again, it's a bargaining chip -- but owners pushed for leniency, as they wanted their players on the field. "The league's considerations included a number of issues, including its status legally, but most important was always the advice and recommendations of the medical and clinical professionals," Brian McCarthy, a league spokesman, told The New York Times.