Is it just me, or is the way society treats drug and alcohol abuse confusing? For example, I can’t figure out how professional sports leagues treat players who are struggling with substance use disorder, or how the leagues treat drugs and alcohol in general.
First, there’s the National Football League (NFL). It regularly suspends players who test positive for using marijuana. But has the league ever offered any evidence why it suspends players who do so? Does the NFL consider marijuana a performance-enhancing drug? A drug that can negatively impact the game and the image that the league has constructed? Both? I just don’t know.
Football is a physically brutal sport. Football team doctors regularly prescribe powerful painkilling medications to players who suffer injuries due to this brutality. Some players become addicted to these medications. The addictions hurt them physically and have prompted other players to do illegal things. Some players have suggested that using medical marijuana to treat such injuries can cause fewer addictions and other problems.
Football’s not the only sport confused about drugs. There’s also baseball. Major League Baseball (MLB) has issued lengthy suspensions for baseball players caught with drugs such as cocaine in their systems.
Cocaine isn’t the only drug connected to American professional baseball, of course. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that when I think about baseball and drugs, I think about steroids. MLB has suspended players who have tested positive for steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.
But it never seems clear what these substances are and how the players abused them. Maybe some clarity would help expose such substance use in baseball and prevent it in the future. Furthermore, when players receive suspensions, they usually come back to baseball with few repercussions. Sure, they don’t receive paychecks during their suspensions, but they make good money when they return.
It seems that when football and baseball players receive suspensions, most return to their sports without any major repercussions except for slightly thinner wallets. If leagues were truly serious about stopping drug use, shouldn’t they be more clear about what they consider harmful, and why these things are harmful? Shouldn’t their penalties be more severe? Maybe these measures would discourage future substance use disorder. Or is there too much money involved for the leagues to change the status quo?
