Al Harrington wants to help NBA see benefits of medical marijuana
And Harrington now thinks medical marijuana should be available for use in another location -- the NBA. And his view is now supported, publicly, by the unlikeliest of parties.
“I’m now at the point where, personally, I think it probably should be removed from the banned list,” former NBA Commissioner David Stern told Harrington in a segment for a piece on Harrington’s new business that aired last week on Uninterrupted, the multimedia platform for athletes launched in 2015 by LeBron James. (Full disclosure: Turner Sports, which runs this website on which you’ve stumbled, is an investor in Uninterrupted.)
“You’ve persuaded me,” Stern told Harrington, after the two had met a couple of times earlier this year to discuss the pros and cons of medicinal marijuana. “… If you told the fans that if the players rubbed it (marijuana creams) on their knees that they wouldn’t take a night off, that would really send it over the top.”
Marijuana has been on the NBA’s banned substances list since 1999. A first positive test for marijuana requires enrollment in a treatment program, along with aftercare testing. A second positive test results in a $25,000 fine, and a third positive results in a five-game suspension, with each subsequent positive test thereafter adding five more games to the previous suspension; i.e., 10 games for a fourth positive test, 15 games for a fifth, etc.
The NBA’s Executive Vice President of Communications, Mike Bass, gave this statement to USA Today’s Jeff Zilgitt last week: “while (current NBA) commissioner (Adam) Silver has said that we are interested in better understanding the safety and efficacy of medical marijuana, our position remains unchanged regarding the use by current NBA players of marijuana for recreational purposes.”
Bass said last Thursday that this remains the NBA’s official statement on Stern’s comments.
But Silver's position on medicinal marijuana is a little more nuanced. He said during a trip to Israel in August: "I would say it’s something we will look at. I’m very interested in the science when it comes to medical marijuana. My personal view is that it should be regulated in the same way that other medications are if the plan is to use it for pain management. And it’s something that needs to be discussed with our Players Association, but to the extent that science demonstrates that there are effective uses for medical reasons, we’ll be open to it. Hopefully there’s not as much pain involved in our sport as some others, so there’s not as much need for it.”
Stern’s shift dovetails with a decided move in public opinion toward increased legalization of marijuana.
The NBA, after applying great public pressure, got the National Basketball Players Association to agree to add marijuana to the banned list in ’99. Entering the post-Michael Jordan era (at least, that’s what everyone thought at the time; Jordan had retired following the 1998 season, only to return to the court with the Wizards in 2001), the league had public perception and keeping its paying customers and sponsors happy on its mind. And after the arrests of several high-profile players for marijuana-related charges, the NBA made a marijuana ban a priority. There were also, sotto voce, players who were concerned about the prevalence of use among their brethren.
But now, 29 states and the District of Columbia allow medical marijuana use. Those states are home to 18 of the NBA’s 30 teams -- the Phoenix Suns, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers, LA Clippers, Sacramento Kings, Denver Nuggets, Miami Heat, Orlando Magic, Chicago Bulls, Boston Celtics, Detroit Pistons, Minnesota Timberwolves, New York Knicks, Brooklyn Nets, Cleveland Cavaliers, Portland Trail Blazers, Philadelphia 76ers and Washington Wizards. Eight states -- Alaska, Colorado, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, along with D.C. -- have legalized recreational use.
And a Gallup Poll released just last week showed a record number of Americans -- 64 percent -- now believe all marijuana use should be legal. That percentage is the highest in a Gallup survey since the company started polling on the issue in 1969. And the majority support cuts across party lines, with 72 percent of Democrats, 67 percent of Independents and 51 percent of Republicans supporting decriminalization.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr said he tried medical marijuana last year to try and ease the chronic back pain he’s suffered with for the past two years. Former Knicks president and Bulls coach Phil Jackson said on the CBS Sports Network program “We Need to Talk” last year that he smoked marijuana in the 1970s while recovering from back surgery, but did not know if it had medicinal value or not.
“I think it was a distraction for me as much as a pain reliever,” Jackson said. “But I’ve never thought of it as, ultimately, a pain medication for that type of situation. I know ocular things, stomach, digestive issues and other things, I think it’s regarded quite highly.”
But it’s high time (pun indented), Harrington believes, to get in on a business that generated an estimated $6.7 billion in revenue last year, and is projected to generate more than $20 billion in North America alone by 2021.
Harrington started in earnest in 2014, after providing plants for cancer patients and HIV patients in Colorado. By the time he applied for a license, he’d discovered the Byzantine layers between states when it came to being a budding entrepreneur.
“There’s a lot of different restrictions in each state,” Harrington said. “Each state is governed differently. Some have residency requirements. Some are trying to monopolize the whole process, where they talk about giving out only five licenses. Some states are equal opportunity. Every state is different and has different rules. But in Colorado, you had to be a resident. I was a resident because I was playing. But obviously I couldn’t put it in my name because I didn’t know how the NBA would even react to knowing I had a small piece of ownership in a marijuana company.”
Harrington’s cousin, Dan, became the “owner” of the company, with Al Harrington the silent investor.
Their company doesn’t have much overhead. Though Harrington has hired a COO to get some of the day-to-day business off his plate, he and his cousin do a lot of the scut work throughout the process.
“We’re vertically integrated for the most part,” he said. “We cultivate, manufacture, package, handle ourselves … I travel more than I did when I played in the league. I gambled on myself and I put everything on my own plate. I’ve learned the industry.
“I’ve had a lot of people that were interested in joining my operation and different things like that, but for me, being an entrepreneur and doing this for the first time, I wanted to learn everything on my own without other people influencing and different things like that. Even as far as raising money, I’ve just gotten to the point in almost five years where I’m comfortable raising money, because I know how exactly I can get everyone’s money back. I know how to grow this business now.”
Harrington is not only a rarity in the medical marijuana because of his former day job, but because of his ethnicity. Though some states, including Michigan and Massachusetts, have tried to open up the marijuana marketplace for minority businesses, the vast majority of marijuana dispensaries in the United States are owned by whites.
http://www.nba.com/article/2017/10/30/morning-tip-al-harrington-becomes-medical-marijuana-advocate-businessman
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