By Robin Levinson-King, BBC News
US sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson — considered the sixth-fastest woman in history, with a best-ever 100m time of 10.72 — will be missing the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for marijuana use during the US Track & Field trials. With cannabis legal in many US states, her disqualification has reignited a long debate over marijuana prohibition in Olympic sports. Cannabis has been banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) since 2004. Items on the banned list must meet at least two of three criteria: (1) they harm the health of the athlete; (2) they are performance-enhancing; or (3) they are against the spirit of sport.
The performance-enhancing question is the most contested. In a 2011 paper defending the ban, WADA cited a study suggesting cannabis could reduce anxiety and help athletes “better perform under pressure and to alleviate stress experienced before and during competition.” However, a 2021 review in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness found that most research points to marijuana hindering physiological responses necessary for high performance, by raising blood pressure and decreasing strength and balance. “Yes, anxiety levels go down, but in terms of actual physiological data, it shows that performance is reduced,” said co-author Dr. Alain Steve Comtois of the University of Quebec at Montreal. Richardson told NBC News she had used marijuana to cope with the death of her mother a week before the qualifying race. Amid widespread public sympathy, WADA faced a dilemma: “You can’t run an organisation that is rules-bound, and simply dissolve a rule at a convenient moment,” said cultural historian John Hoberman of the University of Texas-Austin. President Biden questioned the current law, saying “Whether they should remain that way is a different issue,” and even the US Anti-Doping Agency said “it’s time to revisit the issue.”