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- Apr 4, 2013
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The league has made a business decision that players are role models for others in society who are their fans, and that the public image of violating Federal law and sometimes getting popped for it in highly visible arrests is not a good image for the league. It’s why they have conduct clauses in contracts and include alcohol abuse and spousal abuse as items of concern.Again weed being illegal under any law is irrelevant, the NFL are not enforcers of the law, that is the role of the police
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As a business their focus should be on production and public image. They hurt their public image by popping players for something insignificant like weed and they've basically pushed players out of the league who have only ever done weed but were highly productive players and good teammates
If a player shows up to practice or a game blatantly high and is negatively impacting the program, then you deal with that player internally as an organization. That is exactly how any other organization would handle something like that, just like if someone showed up **** face drunk at work... there would be disciplinary action taken towards them, likely even termination.
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Other organizations aren’t dealing with the same public and political(*) profile, so if a warehouse laborer comes to work after beating up his wife the employer can handle it internally because nobody cares. A running back beats his wife or kid and even though it was off the job and had no effect on performance the league will publicly discipline them.
(*) keep in mind if you compare to other organizations you should compare to only those that enjoy exemption from Federal antitrust laws. So not affronting Federal authorities is a key factor in the public image equation.