Legal pot won’t change NHL ... yet
League opts for education over drug policy changes
As Riley Cote took and delivered countless punches over more than a decade of junior and pro hockey, he was eager to avoid painkillers.
Early on, marijuana was touted to the enforcer as a healing option.
“I started noticing some therapeutic benefits,” Cote said. “It helped me sleep, helped with my anxiety and general well-being.”
Now retired, Cote is a proponent of cannabis and its oils as an alternative to more addictive drugs commonly used by athletes to play through pain. Marijuana can be detected in a person’s system for more than 30 days, is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency without a specific therapeutic use exemption and is illegal in much of the United States.
On Wednesday, Canada will become the largest country in the world to legalize recreational marijuana. That means it will be available under the law in seven more National Hockey League cities (it’s been legal to adults in Denver since 2012). The move is a step forward for those who, like Cote, believe marijuana has been stigmatized and should be accepted as a form of treatment.
“It was so tainted for a long time,” Ottawa Senators forward Matt Duchene said. “And now people are starting to learn a little bit more about it and there is definitely some positive uses to different elements of it.”
The NHL and NHL Players’ Association plan no changes to their joint drug-testing policy, under which players are not punished for positive marijuana tests. It is the most lenient approach to cannabis by any major North American professional sports league.
“The Substance Abuse and Behavioural Health Program for decades has been educating players on using drugs, legal or illegal,” commissioner Gary Bettman said. “That process will continue and we will consider what changes, if any, in our program have to be made. But right now, we think based on the educational level and what we do test for and how we test, at least for the time being, we’re comfortable with where we are.”
While the National Football League and National Basketball Association can suspend and Major League Baseball can fine players
for multiple marijuana infractions, only a significantly high amount of the drug found in NHL/NHLPA testing triggers a referral to behavioural health program doctors. Cote estimated about half of players during his NHL career from 2007 to 2010 used some sort of cannabis for medicinal purposes, though players suggest use in hockey currently is lower than the population at large.
More than two dozen U.S. states allow marijuana use for a variety of ailments, but the federal government has not approved it for any medical use. Some players have already done research into the benefits of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) oils. There’s a curiosity about whether marijuana could one day replace or limit painkillers like oxycodone, even if players aren’t yet ready to make that leap.
“There’s not a lot of science out there yet in terms of long-term effects,” said Winnipeg Jets centre Mark Scheifele, who is still on the fence about cannabis use for medical reasons. “I think it’s something that still needs to be thought really clearly about in terms of understanding the long-term effects.”
Through his Hemp Heals Foundation and work with Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, Cote is doing his part to increase the information available. He’s quick to point to studies on cannabis that suggest it can help people after PTSD or head trauma. And yet he acknowledges there’s a long way to go.
“There’s a lot of different things that point to the fact that the science is now backing it up,” Cote said. “There’s probably billions of anecdotal stories, but those don’t mean anything unless it’s backed by science, unless it follows the order of the way it’s supposed to be.”
Bettman contends the mainstream medical community has not concluded that cannabis prevents or heals injuries, and said an argument could be made to the contrary. NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr said it’s a subject that is “at best in its infancy and is going to develop over time.”
Given the looming legalization in Canada, the league and union opted for education over policy changes.
“What we feel was an important element is at least educating the players better on the current marijuana landscape both from a legal and illegal perspective and what’s permitted and not permitted,” deputy commissioner Bill Daly said. “But also ‘What are the products out there?’ because there’s probably publicly a great misconception of what marijuana is, how it’s used, what it’s used for to what the reality is.”
Marijuana is a banned substance as a drug of abuse in the NHL. Cote would love to see marijuana removed from NHL/NHLPA testing to open the doors to widely accepting it, though players say it would take years for hockey culture to welcome such a change — if it ever would.