I’ll be honest, I hadn’t heard of Sha’Carri Richardson before I became obsessed with her story. I was scrolling through Instagram and saw a headline with a picture stating that she was no longer eligible to run in the Olympics due to testing positive for marijuana use.

As usual, after reading the headline I started thinking about alcohol and the role that it plays in well, everything.  I immediately felt that familiar feeling of fury that arises when drugs are involved. I needed to know more. Google told me that according to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, for something to be prohibited it must meet two of the three inclusion criteria: a) it poses a health risk to athletes b) it has the potential to enhance performance and c) it violates the spirit of sport.

My first thought was to wonder how many of the people making the decision about whether or not smoking weed prohibited you from being in the Olympics are drinkers.  I get that they aren’t  the ones competing, but I couldn’t help but imagine a group of elite professionals sitting around a table pouring from a bottle while exiling certain “drugs.” I fear that we picked the wrong drug to worry ourselves with.  Alcohol was made legal which means that the general public assumes it’s safe. Most people consider alcohol less dangerous than cocaine and marijuana regardless of the fact that it is responsible for many more deaths, accidents, and damage. I used to be one of those people who considered drugs “bad” while sipping on my anxiety inducing, habit forming alcohol thinking that I was drug free. But once I learned that alcohol is so much more harmful my beliefs changed. I find myself wondering why we have such strict rules and regulations around some drugs while seemingly no restrictions around alcohol (despite the danger). I’m shocked that people like my pilot and surgeon are steered away from using drugs while at work but there is no test to tell me if they are flying or performing a life altering surgery with shaky hands and a head full of chemical misfires because of an alcohol induced hangover.

Next, I wondered how it is even possible that weed can be considered a performance enhancing drug.  Getting high is very unlikely to help Ms. Richardson run faster and I think most people would agree with me. Marijuana may help with inflammation of her joints or ease anxiety about performance and maybe that is what they are referring to? If so, they probably need to ban Tylenol, lavender oil, and anything else that athletes use to aid their bodies in performing at such high levels. 

Finally, in terms of “the spirit of the sport” I have trouble wrapping my head around how a 21 year old black female athlete can be judged so harshly for smoking weed after her mother died while we are forced to watch ads and see pop ups about how things like Michelob Ultra are good for your health during commercial breaks of the Olympics. (Contrary to the commercial, even though I kept my carb count low, I puked once after drinking too many Mich Ultras). The rich white men who run the alcohol industry make bank at sporting events.  Alcohol is one of the biggest players in sporting sponsorship and it preys on young, mostly black athletes, to sell.  It seems that we as a culture have chosen to ban drugs that aren’t income producing vs choosing the ones that are actually the most dangerous or harmful to the athletes.

I understand that there are rules and that the rules must be followed.  I’m actually a lover of rules, especially those that are meant to keep us safe and provide structure. I’m just having a hard time accepting that the rules are really in the best interest of the athletes.  In this case, it feels like the rules are meant to oppress one group but benefit another.  Kind of like how some people (white men) are making money off of their weed businesses and others (black men) are being arrested and jailed.  

At the age of 21 I passed a work drug test despite that I was a raging binge drinker. The whole thing just seems wrong.  So, to Sha’Carri Richardson, I salute you for your incredible hard work and the effort and sacrifice that you have made your whole life.  I’m sorry that we’ve gotten it all wrong and that you’re the one suffering the consequences of that. I hope that the rest of the world will see this too.

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