Iole: NAC ban ‘outrageous injustice’
“Never did the Nevada Athletic Commission seem more like a kangaroo court than it did on Monday. Hopefully, a judge will step in and right this outrageous injustice.”
The authoritative and level-headed Kevin iole just did the text equivalent of a Ronda Rousey fight in response to the Nevada Athletic Commission handing Nick Diaz the strongest penalty in the sport’s history. It was for failing a marijauna test three times, sort of.
There is no disputing that Diaz failed a test for the demon weed, twice, at UFC 143 and PRIDE 33. However, there is deep doubt about the failure this time. It would entail Diaz smoking during fight night, and then unsmoking an hour later.
He was administered three tests on Jan 31. The threshold for a positive result is 150 ng/ml. Anything under that and you have passed – commissions generally do not and should not care if you smoke marijuana recreationally or medically. It is only fighting while high that is and should be prohibited.
The first and third tests were by the World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory (SMRTL) in Salt Lake City. The middle test was administered by the non-WADA accredited Quest Diagnostics.
7:12 p.m. – 48.73 ng/ml (PASS)
10:39 p.m. – 733.23 ng/ml (FAIL)
11:50 p.m. – 61.04 ng/ml (PASS)
There is some question about how long the human body takes to metabolize the active ingredient in marijuana. For a regular user it can be up to ten days, with four days being close to the norm. It is not 71 minutes.
Cruel and unusual: Nevada commission’s five-year ban on Nick Diaz is abuse of authority
Diaz attorney Lucas Middlebrook did a wonderful job chipping away at the commission’s case, but it got Diaz nothing but a huge legal bill.
Dr. Hani Khella, a medical review officer and the CEO of Industrial Medical Testing, appeared as a defense witness and testified the reason he didn’t recommend the B samples be tested was that Diaz already had two negative results from SMRTL.
Middlebrook was masterful building a case that the positive sample from the Quest test should be ignored.
The commission, though, chose to overlook it. Chairman Francisco Aguilar said during deliberations that he believed other circumstances should play a role in the penalty handed down. Commissioner Pat Lundvall originally proposed a lifetime ban, but cut it to five years when commissioner Anthony Marnell expressed skepticism.
It’s clearly ludicrous to suspend one guy for a year for using a performance-enhancing drug and another guy five years for smoking marijuana. And that’s if you agree about the validity of the test result from Quest, which Middlebrook managed to make look extremely suspect.
The burden is on the commission to prove its case and it woefully failed to meet it on this day.
Meting out punishment is a solemn obligation, particularly in a matter that may end a person’s career, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly.
If you’re going to give Diaz a five-year penalty for using marijuana, which is legal in several states, then the commission absolutely had to have far better evidence of guilt than it presented.
This simply feels like a vast overreach and an abuse of authority.
The Nevada Athletic Commission, led by Aguilar, should be commended for its dedication to removing performance-enhancing drugs from the sport. Marijuana isn’t a performance-enhancing drug, but as long as it’s on the WADA banned list during competition, it’s within the commission’s rights to test for it and to penalize for failed tests.
However, the testing must be accurate and the penalties must be proportional.
Silva committed a far more egregious offense and made a complete joke of his hearing, and got a one-year penalty.
Diaz hired an excellent attorney who presented a compelling case. Yet, he received what could amount to a lifetime ban for reasons that never quite became clear.
Never did the Nevada Athletic Commission seem more like a kangaroo court than it did on Monday.
Hopefully, a judge will step in and right this outrageous injustice.
