The league pulled marijuana off its banned list in the new players’ agreement. In the same document, it banned psilocybin, DMT and ibogaine for the first time.
The WNBA just stopped treating weed like a problem. It picked a new one in the same breath.
Under the long-form collective bargaining agreement, the league and the players’ union executed on May 22, marijuana no longer appears on the list of prohibited substances. Under the old deal, it sat under “Drugs of Abuse.” The substance-list details were first reported by Marijuana Moment.
But on the way to loosening up, the agreement tightened somewhere else. For the first time, it names four psychedelics as banned: psilocybin and psilocin, the compounds in magic mushrooms, plus DMT and ibogaine. Synthetic cannabinoids got added too, including delta-8 THC and its byproducts. So the plant comes off the list while the substances that a growing wellness movement has been championing go on it.
Dropping weed is not the same as a free pass. Players can still be tested if they enter the league’s Drugs of Abuse Program, if they are found under the influence during team or league activities, or if there is a dependency issue. Skip a referred treatment program and the fines start at $300 a day. But the everyday, random “are you smoking” testing for cannabis is gone.
Players Can Invest, With Strings
The deal also spells out money. Players can hold a stake in a marijuana company as long as it stays passive, meaning no management or executive role, and stays under 50%. They can actively promote and endorse CBD products, though if those products come from a marijuana company, they need sign-off from both the league and the union first, and the CBD cannot be tied to a marijuana brand in a way that blurs the line.
That structure leans on federal scheduling. The agreement bars players from owning any piece of a business that makes or sells a Schedule I or II substance. Marijuana sat in Schedule I from 1970 until this April, when the Trump administration moved state-licensed medical cannabis and FDA-approved cannabinoid products to Schedule III. A broader rescheduling hearing is set to begin later this month.
Last To The Party
The WNBA is not breaking new ground here so much as catching up, and it has further to go. Its old cannabis policy was harsher than the NBA’s. The NBA dropped marijuana from its banned list in 2023 and cleared players to invest in and promote cannabis companies. The NFL reformed its policy in 2024, cutting fines and raising the THC threshold. The NCAA pulled weed from its Division I banned list the same year.
The change also lands on a league that produced the most globally recognized cannabis-prohibition story in American sports. Brittney Griner, the WNBA center detained in Russia in 2022 over cannabis, became the face of how far punishment for the plant could reach. The league that once tested for it has now taken it off the list. The substances replacing it are the ones the next reform fight will be about.
