If you reach stage III because you’re a knucklehead like Josh Gordon, you should not be smoking weed or be anywhere near it. If someone suspends your descent after you jump off the cliff, you shouldn’t be smacking the hand away, you should be accepting that as your last goddamn chance.
Do you not understand that? Another example: if you get a DUI and the judge gives you ARD with the condition that you not drink, you should not be drinking. How can you ask for mercy if you smell of alcohol or test at .01, or are caught in a car with a bottle of booze? The judge will throw your ass in the hoosegow, and rightly so. Same same. Josh Gordon simply cannot understand that this time they are done playing around, and the judge (Goodell) is going to squash him for it.
I get that it’s why they test him frequently. But why do they need to test to such stringent amounts? Why do you want the error bars to be such a significant fraction of the measurement you’re going for? The NFL isn’t just doing it for show - they could easily just match the Olympic testing and say “our tests are up to the same standards as the Olympics” and retain credibility.
And since they’re testing him every few days, it’s not as if they need to look for a small amount which might’ve indicated that he smoked weeks or months ago. If he was smoking weed, you’d have a very solid, clear sample measurement. You don’t have to go searching for little traces as the edge of detectability.
And Air Traffic Controllers are supposed to use zero drugs, too. So why is their policy so lax? Is whether an air traffic controller is doing some mind-altering drugs less important than if an NFL player is doing it?
Or do they realize that searching at the edge of your capability for the tiniest traces is more likely to result in bad data or false positives?
The NFL’s policy on testing is clearly stupid, as you can see by noting that they use the opposite policy of every other drug tester in the world - their rough and dirty less accurate A test is used to set the amount of the measurement, and then the more accurate B test actual test results are ignored and the A test is what matters. On the practically 100% accurate B test, Gordon was under even their unnecessarily stringent standards.
Only only the A test, which is known to be the less accurate test, which has error bars which are a significant fraction of the threshold because of their extremely stringent standards, came up just a bit over the threshold. The accurate B test came up below it. They are deliberately choosing to use the test that’s known to be less accurate over the one that’s known to be very accurate, all to chase down a guy who, due to the fact that he gets tested every few days, would score a much higher result if he smoked.
If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit. If it’s second hand, you cannot ban. The defense rests.
Also, I don’t know the source for this, but multiple reports (example) indicate the league doesn’t intend to suspend for passive contact/secondhand smoke. You’re posting with the assumption that it does, but if it doesn’t, their testing policy is counterproductive.
Is there a reason you had to make that post so obnoxious? How the hell would I know what goes on in the background of rules discussions between armies of lawyers? Maybe the NFL offered up something beneficial to the union in exchange for a draconian drug testing policy. Because the union let it be part of a contract that covered thousands of issues doesn’t make it not stupid.
The Bears aren’t even playing the Browns this year, settle down.
But it’s effectively zero. I mean, we’re talking a couple molecules of THC in his urine sample. If they tested the underwear of a random Denny’s hostess for the presence of Benjamin’s semen, they’d find more than 16 nanograms.
Yeah, it was a bit more obnoxious than I intended, especially when viewed on screen in it’s full glory…
Regardless, it aggravates me to no end when people, not just Josh Gordon, violate rules that they knew about and agreed to beforehand, and then complain that the rules are too strict.
If the NFLPA agreed that players would be suspended for 5 games if they were caught driving through Decatur IL on the 3rd Sunday of the month and Joe Hairbags decided to drive his Yugo through Decatur IL on the 3rd Sunday in July then was subsequently suspended for 5 games by the NFL then tough titties. Yeah the rule may be stupid but he agreed to it.
Same goes for Josh G. Do I give a shit if grown men smoke up? Not in the least. Do I think it should be legal? Sure. But Josh G could have expressed his disagreement with the rule by not playing in the NFL. Making excuses now is weaksauce.
If the NFL has stated that they don’t intend passive/secondary contact with marijuana to be a bannable offense, then they’ve fucked up their own goal by requiring such a stringent test, which all other major organizations, including those where drug testing actually matters, have ruled out specifically because the threshold is so low that it generates false positives and positives from secondary contact.
Moreover, at the conclusion of the drug test, the NFL has two test results - one which is roughly accurate but known to be inaccurate, and one that is extremely accurate, and they use the results from the inaccurate test as the official measurement. That’s also stupid in a vacuum.
Situations like Gordon’s gives us a chance to rail against the awful NFL and the egregious things the NFLPA have agreed to. Maybe we can change some minds. If the league becomes convinced that everybody thinks their marijuana policies are stupid, it might change them.
The primary purpose of the marijuana restrictions is, in these times of growing public acceptance, as a club to occasionally beat the players with.
As a Brown’s fan of course I don’t want him suspended. Pot laws have been stupid for longer than I’ve been alive so I’m pretty used to that but Gordon’s an idiot for putting himself into a position to risk this.
That being said what I’m pissed about now is it was just announced that it could possibly be one to three weeks before the decision on the suspension is made. WTF??? The first preseason game is this weekend and it’s possible the preseason could be more than half way over before we find out if he’ll play this year?
In the mean time, if he’s going to play he needs as many practice reps as he can to get in sync with not one, but two QBs. And if he isn’t going to play those reps need to go to other people. Not to mention pulling a possible receiver off of someone’s scrap heap.
They’ve been mulling this over since May, you’d think a decision like this could be made weeks ago, if nothing else to give the team time to deal with the outcome.
Off topic but the Brown’s will wave/injured Jason Pinkston today. He was a guard taken in the fifth round in '11 and started every game that year and looked like he could develop into the sort of lunch pail players Brown’s fans love. He sat out most of last year due to potentially life threatening blood clots and HIPAA being what it is it hasn’t been confirmed he’s still dealing with them but it’s a safe bet. He was a decent player and a really good guy. I wish him well.
I’m of the opinion that the League has delayed their decision this long because they’re aware of how stupid their rule is, how close to innocent Gordon was, and how it might go from here…
I think a massive email to the NFL from thousands of fans about their policy might have an impact on this. Maybe not in this case, but maybe for the future.
But it’s NOT zero, and it’s supposed to be. Instead we get the “I understand it’s not zero and it was supposed to be, but why are they taking such a hard line?”, thus indicating that Josh Gordon isn’t the only one that doesn’t get it. The response, once again, is that it’s supposed to be zero. Until this is clearly understood, there’s no point in going any further.
Is the policy stupid? Sure. So what? The players union agreed to it and Josh Gordon just had to hang with his boys instead of staying the hell away from anything that would cost him millions of dollars. You offer me that and I’ll live in a damn bubble for 10 years. Millions of people manage to never pop positive at any level, but let’s give Josh Gordon a flyer.
How close to innocent? Josh Gordon isn’t some poor innocent guy who just happened to be at a party the night before he had to take a drug test. He’s been busted for having weed in the car a couple times, he was kicked out of Baylor for what he claims was smoking marijuana, he’s been arrested for DUI, gets bailed out of jail by a convicted drug dealer who also carries weapons, and he already has a prior suspension.
I suppose it’s possible that he hangs out with people who smoke pot constantly, but never imbibes himself, he lets them carry their stashes in his car, he just forgets that codeine is a banned substance, someone forced him to drive drunk, and he didn’t know that guy who bailed him out. He’s one helluva unlucky dude.
Or, he’s a dipshit who smokes dope, drives drunk, hangs around with other dipshits, and throws his prodigious talents away because of it.
In other NFL news, Andy Dalton got himself a nice contract…and it was pretty nice for the team too, as they can jettison him after two years with not a lot of guaranteed money, unlike the albatross deal the Ravens signed Flacco to.
