People around the world have accepted marijuana use more than ever in modern history. This changing stance is clearly evident by how the Olympics now approach the medicinal herb.
Olympic History of Marijuana
Back in 2013, the World Anti-Doping Agency raised the bar of acceptable levels of THC in Olympic athletes. The acceptable level of THC in the body used to be 15 nanograms for Olympic athletes, but now they bumped that number up to 150 nanograms. This change will help differentiate between current and past users since marijuana can stay in the system for up to 30 days or longer. So athletes can’t be lighting up during competition days, but they won’t get in trouble for having used it before competition or during training, for example.
One famous incident of Olympic marijuana use was when snowboarder Ross Rebagliati won gold at the 1998 Winter Olympics but tested positive for cannabis use. The Olympic committee attempted to take away his medal but had to give it back when they discovered marijuana was not on the official, banned substance list until 1999.
Marijuana and the Olympics Today
These days, the Olympic committee is much less concerned with marijuana use and much more concerned with doping drugs. This is made clear by the fact that they could care less about Michael Phelps smoking weed after the 2008 Olympics, but they have a microscopic focus on the Russian athletes who participated in a “state-sponsored doping program.”
So far, 118 Russian athletes have been banned from the Rio Games, and Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova (still allowed to compete in the games after being caught up in the scandal) was met with a wave of boos when she entered the Olympic swimming stadium for the first time.
Now, Olympians who use marijuana during training for medicinal purposes but quit before the games won’t have to worry so much about passing a marijuana drug test. But Olympians have been using cannabis long before these new rules were put in place. Why? Because medical marijuana provides Olympic athletes with medicinal benefits, like pain management and bodily rest and recovery, that don’t come with the same side-effects and addictive qualities as other pain medications.
The point of all this being that the Olympic committee is much less concerned with athletes occasionally toking up before the games begin instead of using addictive prescription painkillers, and much more concerned with steroids, growth hormones, and elaborate doping schemes.
So there you have it. Even the Olympics accept the medicinal use of marijuana for athletes worldwide. Meanwhile in America, we are still waiting for the federal government to recognize and legalize medical marijuana.
Stop by Las Vegas ReLeaf medical marijuana dispensary, located just 500 feet from the Las Vegas Strip, to learn more about medical marijuana legalization in Nevada and discover which cannabis strains are most beneficial for pain management and other severe medical conditions.
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As a retired Safety Manager of an aerospace steel fabrication plant, I was responsible for employee drug-testing. I didn’t want people coming to work high, even if it was just marijuana. But, I did not care about people’s personal use at home. I found a fantastic mouth swab kit that would let me know if the individual had just recently used marijuana. So, if trace amounts were in their body, no problem, they’d pass. But, if it was detected in their saliva via the swab test, that meant usage within just a few hours. That’s how I determined whether or not my employees were high on the job.