STEPPIN' OUT

Former Cowboy Mark Stepnoski Tackles A New Role--Leading The Charge For
Marijuana Reform

He knows it won't be easy--coming out of the "smoky closet," as one
marijuana advocate puts it. After all, he has been a professional football
player for 13 years, a five-time Pro-Bowler, a two-time Super Bowl champ, a
Dallas Cowboy. He can almost hear the voices of those who would accuse him
of all manner of betrayal. Wasn't he supposed to be a role model? Someone
who needed to send the right message to kids--a message in lockstep with
the hard-line anti-drug stance of the NFL? But to sign on as the new
president of Texas NORML, an organization dedicated to reforming marijuana
laws, to join its national advisory board, well that just seemed a reckless
way to kick off his retirement.

At 34, Mark Stepnoski could no longer keep his principles to himself. He
had known hypocrisy in a league that generates huge revenue from alcohol
and tobacco advertising, drugs that he believes are much more harmful than
marijuana. He had been subjected to random drug testing for a recreational
drug that in no way affected his performance on the field. He had sensed
the futility of an unwinnable drug war whose main victims are marijuana
users like himself, their lives ruined because of a law that he believes is
as wasteful as it is unjust. Yet despite 20 years of personal use, he
remained silent until retiring this season. "To come out when I was playing
would have caused a lot of grief," Stepnoski says. "The media would have
had a field day, and it would have generated a lot of negative publicity
that the team certainly wouldn't have wanted. I didn't want it either."

By outing himself now, Stepnoski becomes one of the first NFL football
players past or present to publicly advocate the decriminalization of
marijuana and a powerful pitch man for drug-law reform. It's a common
tactic, really--to enlist celebrities to sell your point of view, a tactic
also employed by drug-war advocates in their zeal to win the hearts and
minds of those in the murky middle.

Even as a player, Stepnoski was never one to seek celebrity, though he
seemed to attract it by the cut of his hair, which was unconventionally
long for the NFL. He was the center whose sweaty shoulder-length strands
dangled beneath his helmet on game day. He was the 260-pound lineman who
had to compensate for his smaller size by being quicker, stronger, more
agile than the 350-pounders he was assigned to block. He was the
publicity-shy ball player who chose to do his weight training during lunch
and dodge the daily meet-and-greet with the media. "Every sports interview
is just like every other sports interview--mindless questions, cliched
responses," he says. "If I had a nickel for every time some reporter asked
me about my hair."

Stepnoski says he was all about the game; of course, the $14 million,
five-year contract he signed with the Cowboys in 1999 just made the game
that much more enjoyable. But playing ball was all he ever wanted to do,
and he wanted to do it better than anyone else. His father played in high
school, his brother in college, and he took to it naturally by age 9,
playing throughout his school days in Erie, Pennsylvania. At the University
of Pittsburgh, he played guard, making several All-America teams and
attracting the attention of the Dallas Cowboys, which drafted him in the
third round in 1989, a few months after Jimmy Johnson became head coach.

Starting at center by the end of his rookie season, his play took on an
intensity, a seriousness of purpose, that put everything else in his life
on hold. "I knew the average NFL career is four to five years," he says. "I
pushed everything else out of my mind but football. You never knew when it
was going to end." He delayed marriage and kids and says he shunned the
kind of off-field carousing for which the Cowboys had become notorious. "I
was serious about the game, so I didn't want to do anything to detract from
my performance on Sunday."

That didn't stop him from lighting up the occasional post-game reefer, or
smoking a joint to alleviate the pain from his banged-up right knee and the
six surgeries he underwent to keep it functioning. "From my own personal
experience, it seemed inherently less harmful than alcohol," he says. "When
you are playing football in 105 degrees, and you drink a couple of
six-packs, you can't go out the next day and perform. That's just not the
case with marijuana."

The league mandated that each player submit to one random drug test
annually, which could be administered any time between minicamp in April
and training camp in mid-August. By abstaining for four to six weeks before
minicamp, he passed every drug test he took. "It's all about responsible
use," he says. "I could quit anytime. There was no withdrawal. No nothing."

Drug warriors would disagree, particularly the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, whose recent anti-marijuana media blitz warns parents: "And
don't be fooled by popular beliefs. Kids can get hooked on pot. Research
shows that marijuana use can lead to addiction."

It's these kinds of ads, coached in qualifying words like "can" and
"could," that cause drug-law reformers to brand them as propaganda,
condemning their science as fuzzy, lacking peer review or replication.
"Smoked marijuana is not harmless, but it is no more addictive than, say,
coffee or tea," says Dr. Alan Robison, a former chairman of the department
of pharmacology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in
Houston. "Young people know they are not being told the truth," Stepnoski
adds, "which is exactly what erodes their trust in authority."

Stepnoski says he made it his business to educate himself on these issues,
subscribing to High Times magazine and occasionally contributing
financially to NORML. Risking exposure, he became a lifetime member by
donating $2,000 to the organization in 1998. He envisioned becoming more of
an activist, particularly as his career began to wane.

Returning to the Cowboys from the Oilers in 1999, the game just wasn't the
same for him. His closest teammates had either retired, been traded or
both. The Cowboys were playing poorly, posting two losing seasons (2000,
2001), and football just didn't seem as much fun anymore. The call from
Jerry Jones came as no surprise last February. The Cowboys would be
releasing him; he was too expensive, they had to think salary cap.
Stepnoski's agent said there was some interest from the Washington
Redskins, but after 13 years, he knew he was done. "I felt fine walking
away from the game, because I reached the point where I was convinced I
just couldn't physically stand the rigors of an entire season."

A year earlier, Rick Day, then the executive director of Texas NORML, had
written him a letter, hoping to enlist his support: "I expect you may be in
the process of re-evaluating your life...so let me suggest a new challenge:
the regulation of marijuana for adults in Texas. Think of it as the
culmination of a career as a Texas icon."

Once matters with Jones were settled, he phoned Day and told him he was
ready to do what he could: help lobby the upcoming Texas Legislature to
decriminalize marijuana; join NORML's national advisory board of
celebrities; even take over as the new president of Texas NORML since Day
would be moving to Atlanta.

"To change a law, you have to change people's minds about the law," says
Allen St. Pierre, national executive director of the NORML Foundation.
"Celebrities and athletes are the best placed to change the minds of
others. Marketers know it. Politicians know it. Not surprisingly, drug-law
reformers know it, too."

Stepnoski hopes to debunk what he calls the "faulty assumption" that pot
causes amotivational syndrome, which is characterized by a decrease in
drive, ambition and productivity (read: burned-out stoner). "Having someone
like me on NORML's national board can dispel this myth. You can't play
football in the NFL at my level for 13 years with amotivational syndrome."

The Cowboys refused to comment on Stepnoski's foray into pot politics, and
when former teammate Darren Woodson heard about it, he acted surprised.
"Whoa, no comment. I don't want to say anything about that. I got kids."

Sue Rusche, president of National Families in Action, a drug abuse
prevention group, doesn't feel similarly restrained. "He is setting a
terrible example," she says, and if given the chance, she would like to
educate him on how marijuana use among teen-agers is on the rise and how
its perception as a harmless drug is wrong. "There is no doubt that famous
people have a major impact on kids, and it's really sad to me that a major
sports figure would embrace legalization."

Stepnoski, however, believes he is acting as a positive role model by
bringing truth to whoever is willing to hear it. He believes he is modeling
"responsible use" by agitating for laws that allow only adults to possess
marijuana in the privacy of their own homes, through a regulatory scheme
similar to beer or tobacco, which does not waste valuable police resources
and frees the nonviolent pot smoker from the risk of prison.

"Football is part of the American culture, but it is still a game," he
says. "What I am dealing with now is not a game. We are talking about
people's lives."