If school policy and the law weren't enough to keep Penn athletes away from marijuana, the NCAA has just upped the ante.
According to a June 22 USA Today article, the NCAA may expand its drug testing program to include year-round screening for street drugs such as marijuana and cocaine.
The proposal was created by the Committee on Competitive Safeguards, chaired by Jerry Koloskie, senior associate athletic director at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. It will likely be discussed during today's meeting of the NCAA's Championships/Competition Cabinet, which is responsible for regulating nearly all aspects of competition.
If accepted, the new testing could go into effect in August of 2008.
The rationale of the new policy, as stated in the official proposal is that it "will provide a deterrent effect to drug use due to the potential for any student-athlete from any sport to be tested any time throughout the academic year," citing health and safety as the major negatives to use of street drugs, along with its effect on academic as well as team performance.
According to the report, testing for marijuana was also a request of many institutions surveyed in the NCAA's biennial report on the testing policy.
Currently, a positive test for a banned substance results in a year-long ban from competition. The proposal carries with it, however, provisions to lessen the penalties for street drug use. A first-time offender would be withheld from half of the competition in all sports; a second-time offender would be given a yearlong ban, and a third offense brings a permanent loss of eligibility.
The lighter penalties are, according to the proposal, to encourage schools to provide treatment and education to athletes who test positive.
And the expansion of the testing periods, advocates say, corrects a long-standing aversion to intrude on privacy.
"Part of the reason [testing was confined to the academic year] was philosophical," said Andrea Wickerham, who oversees NCAA drug-testing as legal relations and policy director for Drug Free Sport, in a 2006 interview on the institute's Web site. "There was a belief that there should be a time when little athletically-related demands were placed on student-athletes."
The NCAA's last major survey, conducted in June 2001, showed that 27.3 percent of the 21,225 athletes questioned had used marijuana at least once in the previous year.
