lost in the discussions of the Nevada state athletic Commission’s draconian punishment of Nick Diaz and the far from ideal situations of his Camiseta Selección de fútbol de Camerún hearing is the fatal flaw in modern day athletic commission testing for marijuana.
Marijuana is, by WADA and by many athletic commission standards, only banned in competition (as opposed to steroids and other performance enhancing drugs which are banned whatsoever times.).
The reason for this is simple. Marijuana, alcohol and other so called ‘drugs of abuse’ are not performance enhancing. In fact, WADA does not even ban alcohol in competition for many sports with the exception of those where harm is perceived to be possible such as air sports, motor sports and archery. Intoxicating substances are only banned in competition in the combat sports world for the Camiseta Selección de fútbol de Polonia safety of the fighter consuming them. No regulator will allow a combating athlete to compete while impaired and little argument can be made against this objective.
To this end commissions mostly rely on metabolite screening in urine tests which do nothing to identify if an athlete is impaired while competing. These tests only show that marijuana was consumed some time in the past. Various jurisdictions set synthetic thresholds which, if exceeded, are deemed to be a violation of the in competition ban but these again do not measure sobriety
A far much more sensible method would be to rely on Camiseta Selección de fútbol de Brasil the integrity of pre bout medical screenings. Physicians are present at regulated events. It would take little time and effort for a once over to guarantee no competitor is about to fight while showing signs of impairment. If a fighter is not objectively impaired in any way and satisfies physicians present then the regulator’s genuine safety issues are meaningfully met. Allowing a bout to take place, on the other hand, and finding traces of substances that could have been consumed days or weeks prior, misses this objective and is a practice which regulators ought to seriously consider re-evaluating.
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