Pubdate: Thu, 20 Feb 2014
Source: Westword (Denver, CO)
Copyright: 2014 Village Voice Media
Contact: http://www.westword.com/feedback/EmailAnEmployee?department=letters
Website: http://www.westword.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1616
Author: William Breathes

CAN OLYMPIC ATHLETES SMOKE POT?

Dear Stoner: I'm watching this dreadlocked skier from Norway right 
now and wondering if Olympic athletes can smoke pot.

Reggie Ross

Dear Reggie: The Olympics have a notoriously drug-free stance 
regarding competition, especially when it comes to 
performance-enhancing drugs. For years, that also included a pretty 
hard-line stance on cannabis, and as much as fifteen nanograms in 
your system the day of a test could disqualify you. That's exactly 
what happened to the very first Olympic snowboarding gold-medalist, 
Ross Rebagliati, who had to fight to keep his medal after testing 
positive after the 1998 Nagano games.

All that changed last year, however. The World Anti-Doping Agency, 
which sets the drug-testing rules for the International Olympic 
Committee, increased the threshold of inactive THC to 150 nanograms 
per milliliter of blood - meaning some athletes could be puffing up 
until the week of competition and still pass the tests. "We wanted to 
focus on the athletes that abuse the substance in competition," a 
WADA spokeswoman said in May 2013. "This should exclude cases where 
marijuana is not used in competition."

The various countries can still enact their own policies, though it 
is unclear whether the United States Olympic Committee has kept a 
hard line or not. No official word has come from the USOC on cannabis 
specifically since the WADA decision was made, other than the USOC 
releasing a statement saying they respected the WADA decision and 
would "work to ensure that U.S. athletes are appropriately educated."

Dear Fellow Stoners: A few weeks back we got a note from a reader 
asking why Denver head shop Phat Glass Gifts had boarded up its doors 
and windows. As longtime customers of the half-collapsing former 
house that was Phat Glass, we dug around for an answer. According to 
an employee at the Wellspring dispensary across the street, the lease 
on the old building simply ran out. The owners of Phat Glass stayed 
open until the last day and then called it quits. We've tried 
reaching them, but haven't gotten a response. But we did hear back 
from the reader who'd sent the original query:

"Wow, that is truly heartbreaking. Since I can remember, that was the 
only place I went to buy glass, no exceptions. Everything I bought 
there was high quality. I have an almost full punch card that I had 
planned to use sometime soon. I suppose it is worth more to me now as 
a memento of Denver's best head shop than a free pipe is. I have to 
echo your feeling as well. Sad day."

Steven
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom