What’s the new NBA policy on weed in the new collective bargaining agreement?

The end of the NBA regular season is getting closer and quite a few times are fighting to get a ticket to the playoffs and the Play-In Tournament in case they can’t make it to the top six spots in both conferences.

However, the main news has focused on a big change in the league’s weed policy, as the NBA will no longer test for marijuana, according to a tentative deal between the league and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA).

If it’s ratified by players and team governors, the league will remove marijuana from its list of banned substances and players will no longer be tested for it as part of a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement.

This is the third straight NBA season where the league has suspended random marijuana testing after it was first paused in the Disney bubble, where the competition resumed due to the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2021, the NBA announced that it would no longer randomly test players for marijuana use after suspending testing in March 2020.

The league announced that it would instead “focus our random testing program on performance-enhancing products and drugs of abuse.”

This change in the NBA marijuana policy comes as the debates about cannabis testing policies for athletes keep unfolding in the US.

Some NBA legends like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Allen Iverson have openly admitted to consuming weed use and have asked for cannabis legalization, while Phoenix Suns superstar Kevin Durant said last year that he started to smoke weed when he was 22 years old.

“For me, it’s like having a glass of wine,” Durant said during an interview with TV host David Letterman last year.