When it comes to drug testing, and failed drug tests, in sports, the NFL and MLB make the majority of the headlines. Almost weekly we hear a story about another pro baseball player or football player being suspended for failing a drug test. It’s rare, however, to hear about it when it comes to golf and the PGA Tour.
On Friday, the PGA Tour released a statement saying that Tour pro Robert Garrigus has been suspended three months by the Tour for “testing positive for a substance identified as a drug of abuse”. You can read the full statement from the Tour here:
While “drug of abuse” is a broad term, Garrgius quickly clarified that he tested positive for marijuana and made the following statement:
While more and more states continue to legalize marijuana for both recreational and medical use, professional sports leagues continue to have a zero tolerance policy for the drug. This despite many athletes coming out and saying that it helps them and is a much safer alternative to addictive pain medication.
The one exception to this is the NHL. Emily Kaplan of ESPN wrote this piece at the beginning of March talking about how the NHL has adopted a more lenient policy when it comes to marijuana testing in its league. For the most part, the league abides by a policy where if the drug is legal in the state (or country) that the player plays in, then they won’t take any sort of action against the player should they test positive for the substance. Instead, should a player’s sample come back with high traces of THC, the league will flag it and ask the player if they would like to enter the Substance Abuse and Behavioral Health (SABH) Program.
While the Garrigus situation is just the latest example of an athlete getting punished for using a largely legal substance, it won’t be the last. At least not until the leagues begin changing their policy like the NHL already has.