BACKTALK THE N.B.A.'S DRUG PROGRAM IS NOTHING MORE THAN A MASQUERADE

For a few festive hours Sunday night, millions of children and adults will
happily dress up or don masks and pretend to be something or someone they
are not. On Tuesday, the National Basketball Association's regular season
will open for the 53d time, while a majority of players begin their 82-game
version of All Hallows' E'en, dressing up as entertainers and role models,
masking their off-court dependence on a post-game treat of choice: smoking
a joint. The trick was always not getting caught, a rather simple matter
given the fact that since the league's original antidrug program debuted
back in 1984, the union put up a stoned wall against marijuana testing.

While the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the United
States Olympic Committee all tested for the main human urinary metabolite
of marijuana, the N.B.A. never did. Over time, drug-treatment experts
declared that the league's drug program, trumpeted by Commissioner David
Stern and others for its vision and toughness, was far more puff than
policy, designed to treat public relations problems, not drug problems --
as it turned out, with good reason. The league was basically going up in
smoke, a clear-eyed conclusion my co-authors, Harvey Araton, a columnist
for The New York Times, and Martin F. Dardis of Sports Illustrated, and I
came to three years ago while reporting "Money Players," a book about the
N.B.A. under Stern.

"If they tested for marijuana," the former Phoenix Suns forward Richard
Dumas told me then, "there would probably be no N.B.A."

While pot smoking may not be that pervasive today, there is little doubt
that N.B.A. players have long enjoyed a close relationship with their
little buds. Witness the celebrated marijuana cases involving Allen
Iverson, Isaiah Rider, Chris Webber and Marcus Camby. In the wake of those
cases, the players association -- in one of the biggest cards played during
the six-month collective bargaining battle that culminated last winter --
agreed to allow marijuana testing for all players, coaches and courtside
personnel this season.

In a stunning admission, the players association's director, Billy Hunter,
informed me that his union had traded off the testing of players for
marijuana for bigger issues. "If we were able to resolve other issues, that
became part of it," said Hunter. "We traded it off for something more
important. Right now, I don't quite remember what."

What Hunter clearly remembered was the public backlash after last year's
204-day N.B.A. lockout. "When all is said and done we did what we had to do
to help enhance the image of our players," he said. "The appearance was
that many of them engaged in the use of marijuana. The N.B.A. had been
pleading or crying for an expanded drug program for years, so we took the
high road and acquiesced. It's one of the things you do. But so much was
made of it in public, I still feel like it was a ruse."

Through a purple haze, you can almost see Hunter's point. Unlike cocaine or
heroin -- long banned by the league -- marijuana is a far more socially
accepted drug, its performance-enhancing qualities dubious at best. "We're
way up in the air on that issue," conceded Wade Exum, director of the
U.S.O.C.'s drug-control program.

Still, the fact is, the Federal Government and many companies screen for
marijuana before employment, so why not a league that sells, sells, sells a
pristine image to the public? "Look, like it or not," said a top N.B.A.
spokesman, Brian McIntyre, "kids look up to us. This is the right thing to
do."

Yes, on the surface the N.B.A. has done exactly that. The right thing. Its
new and improved drug program answers all the easy questions.
Confidentiality? You bet. Testing levels? The exact same ones from the
National Institute for Drug Abuse for Federal employees, the N.F.L. and
U.S.O.C. Random testing? Yes sir, both rookies and veterans. Need help?
Step right up, thanks to a voluntary treatment program.

But dig a little deeper and what you see is smoke and mirrors. On Oct. 20,
for example, Mike Wise, a basketball writer for The Times, raised troubling
concerns about the confidentiality quotient when he reported that "a core
provision of the drug testing effort had been violated and the entire
program called into question" because a reporter had learned that about a
half-dozen players tested positive for pot earlier this month during the
first week of tests.

Spend some time reading the fine print in the new collective bargaining
agreement, then consult a few of this country's leading drug testing
experts, and concern about the effectiveness of the N.B.A.'s marijuana
program only increases. David Black, president of Aegis Sciences, which
administers drug tests for many National Collegiate Athletic Association
schools and the Tennessee prison system, said: "To get caught, you either
have to be extremely stupid or really dependent on the drug."

The fine print? As laid out in the N.B.A.'s collective bargaining
agreement, "a First-Year Player may be required to undergo testing for
Prohibited Substances at any time," but "no more than one (1) time during
regular training camp" and "no more than three (3) times during the
then-current Regular Season." Veterans face random testing "no more than
one (1) time each Season" or "during the first 15 days after such a player
reports to his Team."

In case you missed it, the operative word here is may, as in "may be
required to undergo testing." Whereas the N.F.L. agreement states players
"will be tested at least once" before the season, not so in the N.B.A.,
despite Hunter's assurance. "It may be couched in terms of may" he said,
"but I can tell you the N.B.A. intends to exercise that right."

Still, if someone, perish the thought, decides they don't want to test the
No. 1 draft pick or Mr. Big Stuff, it's not mandatory. And with the season
about to start, I can assure you a veteran would have to fire one up on the
bench before the league's "reasonable cause" provision kicks in.

Next, take a closer look at the league's acceptable levels of THC, or
tetrahydrocannabinol, the major active ingredient in marijuana. According
to two drug-testing experts, at 15 nanograms per milliliter of urine,
they're either so "ridiculous" as to raise serious legal questions, or so
"forgiving" as to miss 50-60 percent of those smoking pot.

"One can reach that level by simply being in a room, through passive
inhalation," said Dr. R. Craig Kammerer, who set up the 1984 Olympic drug
lab in Los Angeles. "Forty-eight hours after inhaling passive smoke you
could come up positive. It's very conservative. To me, I'd like to see the
cutoff considerably higher, screening and confirmation at 50."

"If you're a pot smoker, you've got to like that test," countered Black,
who advocates a "zero tolerance" level of 5 nanograms per milliliter. "The
current drug testing programs under way in the United States are programs
drug users should just love, the thresholds are so high."

Beyond the highs and lows, the wills or mays, if the N.B.A.'s doobie
brothers want to roll the dice (or something else), it's quite possible
they'll never get caught, even if somebody's looking. For one thing, both
Black and Kammerer report that marijuana remains stored in the fat cells of
a casual user just five to seven days, far from the 30-45 days so often
reported. In the N.B.A., it's even less. "The players are so lean and fit,
it's much less likely the THC will get stored as fat," Kammerer said.

Finally, if you're desperate, there's a cornucopia of products now
available to help you beat the test. They go by the names of Carbo Clean,
Fast Flush Caps, Ready Clean and The Wizard. Unbelievably, they're
available for the asking at your local nutrition store or over the
Internet. Purportedly, they detoxify your body, in essence, diluting your
urine, adjusting the acidity to prevent the drug from getting into the urine.

That's the kind of pot culture we live in now. Industries built up around
beating Federally mandated drug tests, so truck drivers or police officers
can cop a buzz on the beat. Anti-drug programs as public relations, traded
away for a little public sympathy, a few more bucks, not worth the papers
they're written on.

Armen Keteyian, the author of eight books, is an Emmy award-winning
reporter for CBS and HBO Sports.