The NFL tests players for marijuana, but if the imprisoned former receiver Sam Hurd is to be believed, those tests are very easy to beat.
Hurd told Michael McKnight of TheMMQB.com that during his years as an NFL player he smoked pot “all day, every day, and I didn’t want to hear anyone trying to tell me I had a problem.”
Hurd’s six-year NFL career came to an abrupt end one day in 2011 when he went from Bears practice to a Chicago restaurant to meet with two people he thought were Mexican drug dealers but were actually undercover FBI agents. During that meeting, Hurd agreed to spend tens of thousands of dollars to buy large quantities of cocaine that he said he would have no trouble distributing.
And in his interview with TheMMQB.com, Hurd also said he had no trouble distributing marijuana in the NFL, saying that during the five years he spent with the Cowboys, he became a marijuana connoisseur and passed along the good stuff to about 20 or 25 teammates.
“Whatever was considered the loudest weed in California—I wanted a notch above that,” Hurd said. “I had educated myself on different strains and potencies and growing techniques. I was very selective. It was like wine.”
So how did Hurd and all those teammates avoid being suspended under the NFL’s substance-abuse policy? According to Hurd, players know approximately what time of year they’ll get tested and just stop using when the test is coming up, then use again the rest of the year once they’ve provided their annual urine sample.
Basically, the NFL’s marijuana tests catch only players who aren’t smart enough to figure out the drug-testing system, or players who have such problems that they simply can’t stop for long enough to let drugs clear their systems once a year.
As for Hurd, he’s in a federal detention center awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to conspiracy to traffic narcotics. He could be sentenced to life in prison without parole.