The NBA’s Drug Testing Must End
NBA players and other athletes have repeatedly faced bans for their use of recreational drugs. These policies are a racist holdover from the war on drugs. It’s time we scrapped them.
Jalen Harris of the Toronto Raptors during a game against the Charlotte Hornets, 2020. (Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
In early summer, Olympic sprinter and gold-medal hopeful Sha’Carri Richardson received a one-month ban from the sport due to a positive cannabis test. As punishment for her use of recreational drugs, the United States Anti-Doping Agency disallowed Richardson from competing in the Tokyo Olympics. The incident drew attention to the unfairness of drug testing policies in sports.
A similar though less prominent story broke several weeks earlier. In July, the NBA dismissed rookie Toronto Raptors guard Jalen Harris for violating the league’s anti-drug program. Harris wasn’t accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to gain an unfair advantage over fellow players. Instead, the NBA targeted him for his use of recreational drugs. This is about America’s regressive approach to drugs and the league’s history of racism much more than any attempt to promote fair competition.
Class, Race, and Cocaine
In the 1970s and ’80s, on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, black athletes became more vocal and self-assured about their status in the NBA. Harry Edwards, who inspired the famous protest by African American athletes in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, anticipated and analyzed this cultural shift in his seminal 1969 book The Revolt of the Black Athlete.
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