In an interview with David Letterman, Brooklyn Nets player Kevin Durant explored the stigma surrounding marijuana usage among athletes and said that he often smokes weed.
“To me, it clears the distractions out of your brain a little bit. Settles you down. It’s like having a glass of wine,” Durant said.
Durant says he started consuming marijuana when he was 22 years old. His remarks are notable since marijuana is still illegal in the NBA, despite the fact that players have not been randomly tested in the previous two seasons. The league’s more permissive marijuana policy started with the Orlando bubble.
“We was blowing it down in there,” J.R. Smith recently said during an appearance on All the Smoke. “That was the only way you could really function in that joint.”
Durant has never been suspended for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy, so it’s unknown if he ever tested positive for marijuana.
Durant has teamed up with Weedmaps, a tech company that provides information about marijuana stores as well as user-written ratings. “Change the narrative around athletes and marijuana,” the future Hall of Famer stated.
Marijuana attitudes have altered dramatically in the previous decade, with 18 states now allowing recreational usage. Only six states still prohibit all types of marijuana/THC (Idaho, Wyoming, South Carolina, Nebraska, North Carolina, and Kansas). The majority of states in the United States have either completely legalized marijuana or made it available for medical use.
Marijuana for medicinal purposes has become a hot topic among athletes, with many seeing it as a safer, non-addictive alternative to pharmaceutical medications.