TAKING THEIR HITS

Weeding Is Fundamental For Many Professional Athletes, Even Though They're
Winding Up On The Blotter Pages

The NBA is going to pot. But so are the NFL and Major League Baseball. Does
a week go by nowadays without an athlete getting busted for marijuana
possession? The list of tokin' offenders is too long to catalog here, but it
cuts a wide swath, from Mets reliever Grant Roberts -- who was pictured
smoking in a New York tabloid in September -- to Randy Moss, whose run-in
with a traffic cop was compounded when marijuana was found in his Lexus.

Two weeks ago, Trail Blazers' forward Rasheed Wallace and guard Damon
Stoudamire were passengers in Stoudamire's bright yellow Humvee (a friend of
Stoudamire's was driving) as it tore down I-5 in Washington around midnight.
When the vehicle was stopped for speeding, it reeked like Jeff Spicoli's
van; police found about a gram of marijuana in the car. It would have been
just another story of two athletes caught with weed -- but for the fact that
earlier this year police, responding to a burglar alarm, found a pound of
marijuana at Stoudamire's home. Stoudamire is facing a felony charge
although a judge ruled in August that the stash had been illegally seized.
(Prosecutors have appealed the ruling.) So much for scared straight.

Marijuana use among athletes has become so prevalent that Cavaliers coach
John Lucas, a recovering substance abuser, asks prospects, "How much
marijuana do you smoke?" If they say an amount, he asks, "Can you stop?" If
the prospect says he doesn't smoke pot at all, red flags start flapping and
Lucas suspects the player is lying. "Pot has become the new booze," Lucas
says. "That's just reality."

If you have any doubts, consider how contentiously players' unions fight
marijuana testing. The risible program that baseball's owners and players
agreed on names only steroids as a banned substance. NFL players are tested
once a year for marijuana -- in the off-season. In 1999, after a series of
busts, NBA players agreed to add marijuana to the list of banned substances.
But the tests are scheduled in advance for veterans and, as John Wallace,
then of the Knicks, said, "They let us know about it, so it shouldn't be a
problem."

What's behind the pervasive pot use? Weed has gone so mainstream that
politicians (New Mexico governor Gary Johnson; New York independent
gubernatorial candidate Tom Golisano) have tethered campaigns to marijuana
legalization. According to a Time/CNN poll, 47% of Americans have
experimented with pot, up from 31% in 1983. Usually the claim that athletes
are "mirroring society" is a weak alibi for antisocial behavior. But on this
issue, it might have merit. Marijuana, moreover, would seem better suited to
athletes' lifestyles than the accepted (and legal) intoxicant -- alcohol. "A
lot of times you just want to chill at home or in your room, and you don't
want a hangover," one NBA player tells SI. "Guys are sick of going out [to
bars] and getting into trouble."

Or as Mark Stepnoski, the former NFL center who's now president of the Texas
chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says,
"Guys who drink a lot of beer the night before a game get hangovers. You
don't get a hangover from marijuana."

Marijuana advocates believe their drug is no threat to the integrity of
sports. They point out that pot is not performance-enhancing. (It impairs
coordination and concentration.) And the health risks of moderate marijuana
use are a matter for debate. So should we care if athletes tend to smoke a J
after they shoot the J? "The bottom line is that we are a nation of laws,
and smoking marijuana is illegal," says Gary Wadler, an expert on drug use
in sports and a medical adviser to the White House's Office of National Drug
Control Policy. "There is a social cost when leagues and [players'] unions
effectively condone illegal behavior."

Yet there is no economic imperative for leagues to get tough. And until
there is, one assumption seems safe: Where there's smoke, there's a pro
athlete.