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Continuing to test for marijuana as dumb as breaking the rules to smoke it

4 min read

The only thing more dumb than Le’Veon Bell reportedly missing a drug test and facing a possible four-game suspensions is the test itself.

Millennials smoke marijuana.

So do 40 or 50 million other people spread across every generation. It’s legal in some states and may soon be legal in a state near you.

I’m going to guess Bell was smoking weed on a regular basis a couple of years ago when he led AFC running backs in total yards from scrimmage.

Who knows? Maybe the weed helped him play better.

None of that changes the fact Bell was unbelievably stupid and deserves whatever punishment the NFL dishes out.

Even stupid rules have to be obeyed. Unless, of course, you don’t care about seeing $30 or $40 million go up in smoke. Bell was in the conversation when anybody was talking about who is the best back in the NFL.

But why would any team, including the Steelers, want a guy like him on their roster?

Bell is the kind of guy you build an offense around.

How much time to you think the Steelers’ offensive coaches spent over the last six months designing plays with Bell in mind?

He’s a bad teammate. If the Steelers really cared about players smoking weed and being bad teammates by getting themselves suspended, they would cut Bell or trade him, but they won’t because they don’t.

The NFL needs to stop testing for marijuana.

What the players do on their own time, as long as it doesn’t diminish their talent or reflect poorly on the team should be none of the NFL’s business.

Bell smoking weed in the privacy of his home does no harm to the Steelers or anyone else. Smoking weed in his car and getting pulled over by the cops is a different story.

But smoking marijuana is illegal, you say.

You know what else was illegal? Babe Ruth drinking beer in 1927 when he was on the way to hitting 60 home runs for the Yankees.

How many players would have been suspended if they had tested positive for drinking an illegal substance back then?

And as stupid and selfish as Bell might have been, does missing a test or smoking a joint belong in the same conversation as being accused of sexual assault?

Twice?

Hello, Ben Roethlisberger.

How about being arrested for allegedly hitting the mother of your son?

Hello James Harrison.

Bell is dumb, immature and a bad teammate, but he’s not evil.

And, in 2016, testing football players for marijuana and suspending them for using it is even more stupid than smoking it.

• The Steelers go to training camp this week as one of the favorites to win the Super Bowl. They also go to training camp with one playoff win in the last five years and that was a gift from the Cincinnati Bengals, who committed two of the stupidest penalties in NFL history.

Injuries played a huge role in the Steelers’ struggle at the end of the season but don’t forget that the Bengals had to finish the season without their starting quarterback and came within a minute and a half of beating them with A. J. McCarron in the that playoff game.

The Steelers have, or at least had, an offense good enough to get to the Super Bowl, but that was with the two stoners, Bell and wide receiver Martavis Bryant on the roster.

The defense showed improvement in the second half of last season, but facing nothing but backup quarterbacks may have had something to do with that.

They can still make a long playoff run, but only if Roethhlisberger, who didn’t look quite as elusive as he used to be last season, stays upright. And, with Bell possibly out for at least four games, and his replacement, DeAngelo Williams, being the oldest back in the league, Roethlisberger might be asked to throw the ball 40 times a game.

The Steelers will be fortunate to get 12 games out of him.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday sports column for the Observer-Reporter.

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