One of the major topics of discussion in the country has been the use of marijuana and whether or not it should be legal. Despite most of the negative connotations surrounding it, there have been states that have legalized the drug for not just for medical uses but recreational uses as well.
Throughout his 15-year career, there’d alwats been rumors about Al Harrington being into marijuana for recreational purposes, but Harrinton had never failed a test nor ever been in the NBA’s Drug Program. Since Harrington’s retirement in 2014, he has started up a company that deals in medical marijuana use products called Viola Extracts. Harrington has since opened up farms or warehouses in Michigan, California, Colorado and Oregon.
So it should come as no surprise that Harrington would like to open up awareness about the medical purposes of marijuana. So he managed to set up a sitdown via Uninterrupted with former NBA Commissioner David Stern, who famously clamped down on the marijuana policy during the CBA negotiations of 1999.
“I would say that it was generally known at some point that until we tighten the rules,” Stern told Harrington. That a lot of our players were smoking a lot of marijuana, in fact a lot of our players were coming to us, and told us ‘some of these guys are high coming into the games.’ But we began tightening that up and people accepted the generally held wisdom that marijuana was a gateway drug and that if you start smoking, you’re liable to go on to bigger and better things.”
Stern told Harrington that his mind was changed once he started watching a series of talks about the medical applications of marijuana on CNN. Stern even thought that reasonable minds should be able to agree that marijuana usage for medicinal purposes should be legal.
“I don’t think there’s been a proper spokesperson for this subject,” Stern added. “I think if medical marijuana is available, then it’s up to the team doctor. If it works, we should find a way to get that defined and made official and proceed to educating team docs. And I think all of the leagues are now appropriately focused on player training, structuring the right parts of their body, player rehabilitation. This should be part of that conversation.”
With these conversations that’s going on, there’s a few hurdles that leagues may need to clear. Primarily whether the use of marijuana violates their collective bargaining agreement. However, if David Stern thinks that a conversation needs to happen about medical marijuana, one can only guess that conversation is coming soon.
