basketball

NCAA Makes Move On Marijuana

Published

11 months ago

June 26, 2023

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The National Collegiate Athletic Association(NCAA) is a major player in sports. In 2022, they helped 520,000 students in athletic college programs compete. That includes over 1,100 schools with 19,000+ teams. They are a non-profit footprint covering the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and United States Virgin Islands.

In 2019, pre-pandemic in person turmoil, just NCAA Division 1 sports generated $15.8 billion in revenue. Colleges with football teams can expect to earn an average of $31.9 million per school. The average March Madness game had 10 million viewers. There are dozens of NCAA videos games helping drive the non-profit’s $900+ million budget.

So, they are a slow organization that is slow to changes. The President is former governor and GOP member Charlie Baker. He is a republican when the Grand Old Party in congress is glacially moving toward a more modern and data approach to marijuana.

So it is a big deal when a NCAA panel is calling for the association to remove cannabis from its banned drug list and testing protocols. The testing has been in place since 1986. The NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports, said testing should be limited to performance-enhancing drugs and found that cannabis does not enhance performance.

Just WOW.

football — Photo by Jacobs Stock Photography Ltd/Getty Images

The committee also requested the NCAA to halt testing for cannabis at championship events while changes are considered. No decision has been made, but will be reviewed.

Reason for considering the change was informed by the December 2022 Summit on Cannabinoids in College Athletics and includes the consensus opinion that cannabis is not a performance-enhancing drug and a harm reduction approach to cannabis is best implemented at the school level. Additional rationale included:

Focusing on testing for substances that provide an unfair advantage by enhancing athletic performance.
Shifting toward a harm reduction philosophy for cannabis, similar to the approaches taken with alcohol.
Realigning toward institutional testing and how that testing supports/enhances campus efforts to identify problematic cannabis use.
Educating student-athletes on the health threats posed by contemporary cannabis and methods of use.
Identifying and explaining relevant harm reduction/mitigation strategies to those student-athletes who choose to legally consume cannabis.

The US Is About To Be Sandwiched Between Two Countries With Legal Weed — Is It Next? — Photo by Carol Yepes/Getty Images

To be removed from the NCAA list of banned drugs, the three NCAA divisional governance bodies would have to introduce and adopt legislation. The NCAA is reviewing this and will make a final decision in the fall.

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baseball

Which Sports Fans Smoke The Most Weed

Published

7 months ago

September 28, 2023

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Although The Smiths frontman Johnny Marr once said America’s pastime was only worthwhile if cannabis was involved, many baseball fans don’t agree. According to a recent poll, baseball fans were the least likely to consume marijuana among all major sports. Fans of eSports, UFC, and Formula 1 Racing had a far friendlier relationship with cannabis.

A Morning Consult poll surveyed between 252 and 1,269 self-identified fans of multiple major sports and how often they consumed vices, such as tobacco and cannabis. Although multiple sports leagues prohibit cannabis use and promotion, the poll highlights a growing branding opportunity for professional athletes involving marijuana and CBD products.

About 35% of eSports and UFC fans regularly smoke or ingest marijuana. Racing fans also gravitated to cannabis: at least 30% of F1 and MotoGP fans were normal users. Fans of America’s Big Four sports leagues — NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL — were less cannabis friendly than fans of most other sports.

Sport organizations won’t allow players to sign sponsorship deals with marijuana companies, although professional athletes can freely do so with beer and spirit companies. But leagues have recently opened to the use and promotion of CBD among players. Big name golfers like Bubba Watson, Charley Hoffman, Scott Piercy, and Lucas Glover have signed CBD-related sponsorships without penalty.

It’s simple to understand what motivates players to sign such deals—the Untied States CBD marketplace generated $4.1 billion in sales last year, cannabis research firm Brighfield Group reports. Only racing athletes join professional golfers with permission to promote CBD products. However, Sports Business Journal reported in July the MLS could soon allow teams to sign CBD company sponsorships.

A recent NFL analysis concluded that while “CBD is a promising compound […] the extent of its use in the United States outpaces the level of evidence.” That lack of evidence appears the main conflict traditional sports leagues have in associating with cannabis or CBD products. Added NBA Commissioner Adam Silver: “When we change our policy we have to be really careful because we’re clearly sending a message to young people.”

While a significant portion of most fanbases use cannabis, the leagues would rather leave that possible sponsorship money behind at the moment.

“As much as I would love to sell as many categories and allow our clubs to sell as many categories to monetize, you start getting into health and well-being,” a top sponsorship executive at a major U.S. sports league told Morning Consult. “There’s a whole other part of the organization, including doctors, that look into the effects of that product. And so at this point, we are looking into it, but there’s nothing imminent.”

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