News of American sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson being banned for one-month, after testing positive for cannabis, is one of the latest stories to illuminate the dark underbelly of doping in sport.
Given the sordid history of substance abuse in sport, from cyclist Lance Armstrong’s elaborate 2000 doping scheme to Russia’s 2016 state-sponsored doping 2016 scandal, you can understand the decision by the US Doping Agency to suspend Richardson.
This is an athlete who currently holds the record for the sixth fastest time in the 100m sprint. After blazing the track at the Olympic trials last month, all eyes were on Richardson.
It might seem harsh that the 21-year-old, will now miss her signature event but, cannabis is a banned substance and rules are rules. That’s the long and short of it. To paraphrase Shakespeare then, a banned substance by any other name is just as sanctionable. However, the substance in question does deserve some attention along with a consideration of the very stringent rules governing what constitutes a banned substance. While I’m not condoning any form of substance abuse, in sport or otherwise, I do believe that the justification for certain kinds of banned substance needs to be revisited.
For one thing, Richardson apologised in an interview with NBC, saying that she used it to help cope with the death of her mother a week before the trials. This is a sprinter without any prior history of substance abuse. Secondly, the ability of cannabis to improve athletic performance is arguable. Marijuana has been on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s prohibited list since 2004 on the grounds that it is anxiolytic (used to reduce anxiety) and therefore ergogenic (enhances performance). However, most recently, a 2020 literature review concluded that “cannabis consumption has an ergolytic effect on exercise performance and therefore does not act as a sport performance enhancing agent as raised by popular beliefs. Thus, cannabis consumption prior to exercise should be avoided in order to maximise performance in sports” (Charron et. al).
Thirdly, cannabis was established as a banned performance-enhancing substance almost two decades ago. Since then, the world has made significant strides in decriminalising marijuana possession.
Even our conservative Trinidad and Tobago has progressed where marijuana laws are considered, in some cases more progressive that the seven US states that continue to classify the drug as illegal. In 2019, the Trinidad and Tobago Government successfully amended the Dangerous Drugs Act to include the decriminalisation of small amounts of marijuana. Although this was a step in the right direction, there continues to be great trepidation toward legalising recreational or even medicinal usage.
Part of this trepidation is based on both our conservative judicial ethos as well as the perception of marijuana as a drug that invokes violence.
Richardson’s case points to the archaic stigma towards marijuana users and its usage. The buzz surrounding Richardson’s doping misdemeanour points, I think, to something else, something that bears relevance for Trinidad and Tobago. I’m referring to our laws regarding the business of marijuana. I use the word business here deliberately because just last year, legal sales across the US hit a record of $17.5 billion.
Let’s contextualise this further.
The legal sales of marijuana in the US alone surpassed the total GDP of 76 countries. In 2020, T&T’s total GDP was $21.53 billion. To put it bluntly, given the multi-billion-dollar cannabis industry, we can hardly afford to let the opportunity for a home-grown industry pass us by.
Our regional neighbour, Jamaica, already has a functioning medical marijuana industry.
For the period May 2019 – June 2020, Jamaica’s Cannabis Licensing Authority (CLA) reported a total value of $1.3 million in trade.
In T&T, two years on from the amended Dangerous Drugs Act, there has been virtually no progress surrounding the commercialisation of cannabis. Last month, a report of the Joint Select Committee (JSC) on the 2020 Cannabis Control Bill declared that cannabis will not be allowed to be home-grown.
This latest JSC report does nothing to encourage small business enterprise in a local cannabis industry. Instead, a more likely scenario will be foreign multinationals who dominate, determine, and profit from our locally produced cannabis.
Anti-doping policies such as the one banning Richardson from competing in the 100m sprint at the Olympic Games, though well-meaning and targeted at cheaters, are outdated.
Similarly outdated are our T&T laws restricting the commercialisation of marijuana.
It’s high time (pun intended) that anti-doping agencies revise their classification of marijuana as a performance enhancing drug. In Trinidad and Tobago, we should be equally cognisant of de-stigmatising marijuana through revisions of the Cannabis Control Bill.
The business of cannabis is simply too lucrative to pass up.
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