By Larry Durstin
First of all, no one should be suspended from the NFL for smoking marijuana. No one should be in jail for smoking marijuana. No one should lose a job for smoking marijuana (unless there’s irrefutable evidence that their job performance is hampered by its use). No one’s life should be derailed or disturbed from a legal or punitive standpoint solely because of marijuana use.
The criminalization of marijuana is an insane societal practice that has overcrowded our prisons, overloaded our legal system, unnecessarily and brutally destroyed the lives of millions of (mostly young and black) people and will be looked at by astonished generations in the future as perhaps the most absurd, obscene and morally repugnant policy in our nation’s history this side of slavery and Jim Crow – which, by the way, are the poisonous progenitors of America’s disgraceful War on Drugs.
With the Browns’ Josh Gordon awaiting a possible season-long suspension due to violations in the league’s anachronistic marijuana policy, voices are being heard on all sides of the issue regarding marijuana and young athletes. Unfortunately, the opinion of Sam Rutigliano was solicited and the former Browns coach said that loosening the leagues policy would be a “catastrophe,” leading to “cross-addictions and more serious things.”
Perhaps Rutigliano, who was born in 1933, was dragged to a showing of 1936’s Reefer Madness by his mother and was scarred for life. But whatever the reason, he’s proving that there’s no fool like an old fool, especially when he talks about pot as a “gateway” drug into the nightmare of narcotics that inevitably turns normal folks into monsters.
I guess you could argue that any substance used before another substance could be said to have been a gateway substance – but that’s ridiculous on its face. In that sense, alcohol is probably the biggest gateway drug around since it’s the one most people try first. But the bigger problem with alcohol is that – unlike marijuana – it doesn’t have to “lead” to anything because, in and of itself, it is a dead-on killer drug that has directly caused more illness, death and societal havoc than any substance on the face of the earth. On the other hand, marijuana – in and of itself – does nothing of the sort. Gateway drug, my ass.
People like Rutigliano need to wake up and smell the cannibas. Nearly 60% of the nation’s population live in states where marijuana use is legal either recreationally or medically, and that number will grow substantially in the next few years. Right now, a number of corporations and smaller business – especially those in the high tech field – are removing marijuana use as a reason to disqualify applicants faster than you can just say no.
The reason for this is simple: in order to recruit the best young young talent, if you eliminate pot-smokers from the search in certain hard-to-fill positions, the cupboard can get awfully bare awfully quick. And it’s not so much that these applicants are all using marijuana and just can’t stop; it’s more that young, in-demand job-seekers don’t want to work for employers so far out of touch with reality that they are still drug-screening for pot in 2014. And, furthermore, what’s the point of screening for a substance that’s infinitely less harmful and dangerous than alcohol?
It’s just sort of stupid and anyone with half a brain understands that.The NFL needs to do the same thing and eliminate pot from its banned substances list and “replace” it with testing for Human Growth Hormone – which, unlike marijuana – is definitely a performance enhancer and poses serious long-term health questions for its users. Besides, the league has enough problems with its criminal neglect of the concussion issue to be sweating the small stuff.
But what about the message that un-banning pot would send to the children? This chestnut gets trotted out all the time, usually accompanied by a trembling voice. Well, I don’t know what the message is but it certainly can’t be worse than the message sent out by Budweiser when its commercials hinted that if you drank a Bud you would get more chicks than Spuds Mackenzie. How on earth does a child process that?
But, fair or not, some will say, isn’t the real issue here that Josh Gordon has a pot problem? No, America has a problem with pot since it has chosen – really with no logical reason – since the 1930s to manufacture a drug “crisis” and utilize forceful repression as the “solution.” The heinous results of this ghoulish policy should be visible to even the most casual observer.
More incarceration, more suspensions, and more tongue-lashings by the likes of Rutigliano might make some folks feel all warm inside. But what’s really needed is more voices in politics, the media and, yes, even sports to disregard the righteous tsk-tsking and horrendous mandatory sentences and 75-years of drug-induced madness and, instead, speak truth to power.
What’s needed is to simply leave people like Josh Gordon alone and let them do their thing.
[Photo: Erik Drost]
Larry Durstin is an independent journalist who has covered politics and sports for a variety of publications and websites over the past 20 years. He was the founding editor of the Cleveland Tab and an associate editor at the Cleveland Free Times. Durstin has won 12 Ohio Excellence in Journalism awards, including six first places in six different writing categories. He is the author of the novel The Morning After John Lennon Was Shot. LarryDurstinATyahoo.com