THE UNEASY MIX OF MARIJUANA, SPORT

NAGANO, Japan--Ban the steroids. Eighty-six the growth hormones. Regulate
the Sudafed and watch the caffeine intake. But marijuana? At the Olympics,
no one's sure quite what to say, though they've spent a lot of words on
that uncertainty during the past few days. "The International Olympic
Committee must be very tough to ban these social drugs," says Juan Antonio
Samaranch, the IOC's president. "Fundamental values are at stake," says
Francois Carrard, the IOC's general secretary.

"There are a lot of mixed messages," says Carol Anne Letheren, head of
Canada's Olympic committee. She's right. At 17.8 nanograms of cannabis per
milliliter of urine, Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati certainly wasn't
high. He may not have even gotten high -at least not since last April. But
around the world, Rebagliati's name has become synonymous with marijuana,
and the odd episode that engulfed him last week created a debate new to the
Olympics: What effect does a recreational drug like marijuana have on an
Olympic athlete -and what should be done, legally and socially, to
discourage it?

"A lot of people use it -at certain times. It's as common as alcohol,"
says U.S. snowboarding bronze medalist Ross Powers of Bennington, Vt., who
says he doesn't. "But I don't think you really need to test for it."

Marijuana, of course, differs from the drugs that tend to surface at the
Olympics. It doesn't give an energetic edge. It doesn't make your muscles
artificially stronger. It does, however, have one effect those others
don't: It taps into the American -and, by extension, global -approach to
recreational drugs as an issue of ethics, morality and character.

That's why Rebagliati's positive marijuana test -though he insists he
inhaled it as second-hand smoke at a party last month in Canada -threw
people here off last week even after an appeals board gave Rebagliati his
gold medal back.

Behind the media questions and the official statements seemed to lurk a
wagging finger, a cold eye cast toward anyone who might have had the
temerity to even think about something other than athletics, let alone
engage in a vice.

"We still try to emulate that wonderful Greek ideal world of the Olympics,"
says Henriette Heiny, director of the International Institute of Sport and
Human Performance at the University of Oregon. "And when the real world
clashes with it, there's always a real uproar. But the Olympics aren't that
ideal anymore."

Neither are other sports, to be sure. Yet just how prevalent marijuana is
among athletes, both professional and amateur, is a question with a sketchy
answer; few statistics are available simply because testing is not
widespread.

The NBA, which saw 1986 Celtics draft choice Len Bias die of cocaine use
before he ever played a pro game, is talking about adding marijuana to its
list of banned substances -a move its players' union opposes but some
players don't. "I'm all for it," San Antonio's David Robinson said earlier
this month. "If something is illegal, then they shouldn't allow it, and the
league should say that we have no tolerance for it."

And in the NHL, which doesn't test, Players Association chief Bob Goodenow
went so far as to say that no league players competing in Nagano use
marijuana. "Case closed," he said. That doesn't mean it plays no role in
the pros and major colleges. Last month, the Washington Wizards' Chris
Webber was charged with possession of marijuana, among other things. And on
Sunday, UCLA center Jelani McCoy quit the team after being suspended, then
reinstated; news reports indicated he'd been sanctioned for using
marijuana. Are the Olympics any different?

"I don't know that most sports fans are going to be jarred by marijuana in
the Olympics any more than in the NBA or NFL. They realize the Olympics is
just as much of a business as a professional sport," says C. Peter Goplerud
III, the law dean at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and an expert in
sports law. "The purity of competition that might have existed at one time
is long gone." Samaranch, for his part, isn't hesitant to use the moral
bully pulpit.

"It is not doping," Samaranch said. "But I think it's an ethical point, a
point of principle, and we have a duty to fight against it. Many people can
say, `Well, marijuana is a very light drug.' But many people say marijuana
is a beginning to hard drugs." The IOC hopes to have a new marijuana policy
in place before the Sydney Games in 2000; it appointed a task force over
the weekend to study the issue. Such a policy wouldn't solve the
moral-ethical issue. But it would certainly help Olympic organizers offer a
united front on just what it is they really don't like.

Then, of course, there's the most basic point -something that was discussed
but discarded in The Big Rebagliati Debate. It's the idea that an athlete
truly committed to his or her sport simply wouldn't take the risk -either
of being caught or of turning gold-medal ability into disappointing
finishes.

"When you are involved in high-performance sports, you need to take care of
your body and your mind in the best possible way that you can," Heiny says.
"Marijuana is more of a kids' social partying thing nowadays. I don't think
it's anything that people who have serious goals and objectives are using."

Copyright Los Angeles Times