Abstract

At the 1998 Winter Olympics, Canadian snow boarder Ross Rebagliati tested positive for marijuana, after winning a gold medal in men’s snowboarding. At first, Rebagliati was stripped of his medal, however, after marijuana was deemed to not enhance performance he was given his medal back. Since then, the Global Commission on Drugs has labeled the War on Drugs a Failure, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has demonstrated the racial inequality in arrest rates for marijuana, twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana, and four states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational use. Of course, since then numerous other athletes have been connected with marijuana such as Ricky Williams, Michael Phelps, and Tim Lincecum. This paper will lay out a methodological framework that advocates for using the narrative of athletes who have used or been caught with marijuana to challenge dominant conceptions of marijuana use. More specifically, I argue that the athletic body is often conceptualized as the epitome of health and morality, and therefore can be used to shift dominant conceptions of the marijuana user as unproductive. This paper will situate the necessity in this shift, in understandings of the marijuana using body, within a context where many individuals who could benefit from medical marijuana are denied access to the plant, and a point in time where the War on Drugs continues to disproportionately target poor, racial minorities.