Given all of the various and quite public off-the-field issues that have plagued the NFL this season, many people found that the league was disproportionately harsh on marijuana violations. The noteworthy case for that issue, of course, was the season-long suspension of Cleveland Browns’ wide receiver Josh Gordon, which has since been reduced, though his past history of issues was also part of his punishment.
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Nevertheless, the NFL needed to take a step back and reconsider its punishments for marijuana while also looking at harsher standards for issues such as domestic violence.
With a new NFL drug policy in place, it appears that the league has caught up to the times. Marijuana will be treated by a different set of standards under the deal, according to Tom Pelissero of USA Today:
"All players will be tested at least once per league year during training camp for substances of abuse, including marijuana. However, it’ll take more violations to reach the advanced discipline stages for marijuana than for cocaine, amphetamines, opiates, opioids, phencyclidine or MDMA.A first offense for any of those drugs enters a player into Stage One of the intervention program for up to 90 days. If a player tests positive again while in Stage One, he’ll be subject to an immediate three-week fine and advanced to Stage Two.In Stage Two, players will be subject to unannounced testing up to 10 times a month and marijuana is separated into its own discipline structure."
Those standards are appropriately more lenient. The NFL also addressed the threshold for a positive test, something that was at issue in Gordon’s case, in their new policy. According to Pelissero:
"The threshold for a positive marijuana test will now be 35 nanograms per milliliter – up from 15 ng/ml under the 2006 drug policy, but still lower than the standards used by Major League Baseball (50 ng/ml) and WADA (150 ng/ml)."
How to address drug violations will be an ongoing issue for the NFL, as it is for all professional sports. These new standards will not necessarily be permanent and might continue to need to be addressed in the future, but they are a good first step for a league that needed to re-focus the priorities of its disciplinary policies.