Community | August 08, 2012 | 24 comments

Olympics FYI: Why Is Cannabis Considered a Performance-Enhancing Drug? | Popular Science

source: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/fyi-why-cannabis-olympic-banned-substances-...

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http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/fyi-why-cannabis-oly...

On Monday, American judo competitor Nick Delpopolo was expelled from the Olympics for doping with cannabis. (He says he accidentally ate a pot brownie.) The key word here is “doping”--if the situation were different, Delpopolo might just have been “using." Cannabis is on the Prohibited List, a catalogue of banned drugs maintained by the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA. Test positive for a drug on WADA's list? You're doping, and face dismissal from the Games. Test positive for anything else, even if it's illegal? No worries--you're free to compete. This is one powerful list. But why is cannabis, the users of which are not necessarily renowned for their athletic ability, on it?

I spoke with WADA about the process of creating and maintaining their list. Here's the basic rule, a version of which appears in their official code:

[F]or a substance to be considered for inclusion on the List of Prohibited Substances and Methods, it needs to meet any two of the following three criteria:

Be performance enhancing;
Potentially a health risk;
Against the spirit of sport.


Elsewhere in the code (page 14, if you're reading along), the spirit of sport is defined--it’s both as inspiring as you might hope and as inexact as you might worry. It says the spirit of sport is characterized by values like "character and education," "fun and joy," and "courage." The idea that a drug's legality, and an athlete’s medal, might come down to something so subjective is troubling. And there is, unfortunately, no document explaining which banned drugs specifically violate the first and second criteria, which violate the first and third, and which violate the second and third. And the list is an ever-evolving entity.
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24 comments // Olympics FYI: Why Is Cannabis Considered a Performance-Enhancing Drug? | Popular Science

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