The NCAA, the largest governing body in intercollegiate sports, has announced that marijuana and cannabis products will be removed as a banned drug class for college football’s postseason and all Division I championships. The change took effect as of the conclusion of Tuesday’s Division I Council meeting.
“The NCAA drug testing program is intended to focus on integrity of competition, and cannabis products do not provide a competitive advantage,” said Josh Whitman, chair of NCAA’s Division I Council and the athletic director at the University of Illinois. “The council’s focus is on policies centered on student-athlete health and well-being rather than punishment for cannabis use.”
During the regular season, colleges and schools have their own drug testing policies and standards. The NCAA’s testing and standards — and penalties — take over in the postseason.
Taking cannabanoids off of the banned drug class list removes it from a group of drugs that includes stimulants, anabolic steroids, narcotics, diuretics and drug masking agents and growth hormones.
The decision follows a recommendation by the NCAA’s Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports that each of NCAA’s three member divisions remove cannabanoids from the banned substance list.
“We know that the previous cannabinoid policies and sanctions were not an effective deterrent to cannabinoid use,” Deena Casiero, the vice chair of the committee and head team physician at UConn said in November. “We should be focusing on student-athletes who have or are at risk for cannabis use disorder. Randomly testing at NCAA championships is not the best way to identify or help student-athletes with use issues. The best way is to encourage schools to educate and test within an established harm-reduction strategy in their local spaces.”
It also follows recent actions at the federal and state levels on cannabis. President Joe Biden last month officially moved to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous subtance, a major shift in the country’s drug policy. And earlier this month, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced more than 175,000 pardons of marijuana convictions, one of the country’s largest acts of cannabis clemency.
This is the second time in the last two years that the NCAA has changed its testing policies related to cannabanoids. In February 2022, the NCAA raised the threshold for positive THC tests and recommended divisions adopt new drug testing penalties that urged students and schools create and adhere to management plans.
The changes come months after the NCAA published a study on student-athlete substance use that surveyed more than 23,000 student-athletes from across the country.
Cannabis use among student-athletes increased to 26% of those who self-reported to the survey, an increase of 22% in 2013 and 25% in 2017 (the survey is taken every four years). Cannabis use was reported as highest in men’s sports, at the Division III level and for those attending schools where cannabis has been legalized for recreational and medicinal use. However, weed use appears to be less common among athletes — per this survey — than among the undergraduate populace nationwide, which hovers closer to 40% with other surveys cited by the NCAA.
That said, as cannabis use has climbed, narcotic pain medication continued its fall — about 6% of respondents indicated prescription narcotic painkiller use, with just under 2% admitting use without a prescription. About 17% of respondents who reported cannabis use said they were taking it for medical use; 37% said it helped them with anxiety, depression or stress; and 38% said it helped them sleep.
The NCAA Division 1 council also approved a handful of other changes, including ending limits on how many football staffers can work with players on the field; removing school restrictions on official visits for basketball and baseball programs; shifting recruiting calendars for football programs; and allowing student-athletes to compete in multiple foreign tours with the same school.
