Major League Baseball has pulled marijuana form the list of banned substances for minor league players, a report says.
The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal revealed the news in a tweet Monday evening:
As part of a new agreement on opioids being negotiated between Major League Baseball and the players’ union, MLB will remove marijuana from the list of banned substances for minor leaguers, sources tell The Athletic. Major leaguers have not been subject to testing for marijuana.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 10, 2019
While MLB has already shown much more tolerance for marijuana than other major American sports leagues by not testing big league ballplayers for the drug, it’s still a momentous and significant event to have a major sports league officially remove marijuana from the list of banned substances.
“Previously, minor league players faced a 25-game suspension for a first positive weed test, a 50-game suspension for a second test, a 100-game suspension for a third and a ban for LIFE for a fourth,” TMZ Sports reports.
MLB’s renewed focus on opioids comes after the tragic death of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs, who was found dead in his Dallas hotel room over the summer after succumbing to a mixture of “alcohol, fentanyl and oxycodone intoxication with terminal aspiration of gastric contents.”
Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter @themightygwinn
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