UPDATE (07/06/2021 6:15 p.m. E.T.): USA Track & Field announced on Tuesday that Sha’Carri Richardson would not be a member of the women’s 4x100m relay team, ending her chances of racing in Tokyo.Sha’Carri Richardson should have been spending the next month preparing to win the Olympic gold medal in the 100-meter dash. She had a shot after blazing through the event’s qualifying race last month in under 11 seconds.
Instead, Richardson may not get to run at all in Tokyo after failing a drug test taken during the Olympic trials in Oregon. But it wasn’t a performance-enhancer that was in her system: It was marijuana, which she said Friday morning that she used to cope with learning about the death of her biological mother the week before. Now her 10.86-second run is no longer in the official record books. And unless Richardson is named to the American 4×100 meter relay race team, she’ll be staying home entirely thanks to a one-month ban.
It’s both heartbreaking and infuriating that this is happening to her, a 21-year-old woman whose unapologetic Blackness shines through every inch of her. Instead of competing to be the best in the world, Richardson is the latest Black American whose future was put at risk because of arcane and racist drug policies.
White America’s growing acceptance and embrace of weed has only highlighted the injustice of the suffering imposed on the Black and brown communities of this country for the exact same behavior over the years.
Under the 2021 World Anti-Doping Code, marijuana and other cannabis products are now considered “substances of abuse,” alongside cocaine, heroin and MDMA. This is a bit of progress compared to the 2019 edition of the code, which still treated weed as a banned substance entirely versus a product that has the potential to be abused outside of competition. But it mirrors the place marijuana still holds under federal law; as a Schedule I drug, it’s treated as just as addictive and dangerous as drugs that kill thousands in overdoses every year.
Despite the federal ban, a growing number of states — including Oregon, where Richardson tested positive — have legalized weed for recreational use. The accompanying societal shift has transformed marijuana from being seen as an urban blight to a respectable investment vehicle. Companies that block the hiring of anyone with a previous marijuana-related arrest stand to profit handsomely as more states join the so-called Green Rush.
White America’s growing acceptance and embrace of weed has only highlighted the injustice of the suffering imposed on the Black and brown communities of this country for the exact same behavior over the years.
Those policies were purposeful, designed to marginalize first Hispanic and then African Americans throughout the 20th century. And the racism inherent in United States drug laws has helped shape a world where international drug policy focused on prohibition is the ultimate goal, often resulting in “the excessive use of incarceration as a drug-control measure,” the Johns Hopkins–Lancet Commission on Drug Policy and Health wrote in 2016.
“The evidence also clearly demonstrates that enforcement of drug laws has been applied in a discriminatory way against racial and ethnic minorities in a number of countries,” the commission also wrote. “The USA is perhaps the best documented but not the only country with clear racial biases in policing, arrests, and sentencing.”
Given the current trend in the United States, it may well be that Richardson is one of the last American Olympic athletes to be punished for using cannabis. Isn’t that just horribly fitting? A woman who’s been celebrated for aesthetic as much as athleticism — her hair, her nails, her spirit — would be tripped just shy of the finish line thanks to an accumulated century’s worth of structural racism in drug policy.
As things stand, “her Olympic qualifying results at the Team Trials, have been disqualified, and she forfeits any medals, points, and prizes” from her June 19 race, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency said in a statement. Her one-month ban is the minimum punishment after Richardson “successfully completed a counseling program regarding her use of cannabis.”
Isn’t that exactly what America has always asked of its Black citizens — to take our punishments with grace and humility and then still find a way to bring glory to the country as a whole despite the hurdles cast in our way? Richardson appeared on NBC’s “TODAY” show Friday morning to apologize to her fans. “I know that I can’t hide myself,” Richardson said. “In some type of way, I was trying to hide my pain.” “Don’t judge me because I am human,” she asked the viewers. “I’m you. I just happen to run a little faster.” For now, her Olympic future is in the hands of USA Track & Field, the sport’s governing body in the U.S., which was silent Friday morning about whether she would compete with the relay team. But wouldn’t it say so much if in light of what’s happened she was given the opportunity to help get the U.S. to the podium anyway? Isn’t that exactly what America has always asked of its Black citizens — to take our punishments with grace and humility and then still find a way to bring glory to the country as a whole despite the hurdles cast in our way? In a more just world, Richardson would be running the relay anyway, knowing her grandmother who raised her was watching, her gold medal from the 100-meter dash already secured. The alternative isn’t ideal — but I’d rather see her baton in hand than consigned to watching through a screen like the rest of us.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
