While society generally frowns upon our beloved sportsmen honking on drugs, it is hard not to harbour a sneaking admiration for those who have cultivated a taste for the venerable spliff. While steroids, stimulants, amphetamines and cocaine are all defined as performance enhancing – and as such using them is something of an ethical no-no – there are few who would argue athletic endeavour is heightened by a drug the common side effects of which include acute inactivity, dozing off on the sofa and demolishing half a multipack of Wotsits. The closest that smoking weed comes to enhancing sporting ability is when it coincides with a seven-hour session on FIFA, which some suit over at WADA might argue obliquely increases tactical awareness and thumb agility. Other than that, sparking up a joint before attempting exercise is likely to limit one's effectiveness in almost every way, and as such seems perversely commendable in that it is basically the ultimate test of human skill, dexterity, endurance and coordination.On the basis of this mildly facetious logic, there are a select band of professional footballers who we must single out for special praise. Though football is not as replete with potheads as some other sports – we're looking at you, MMA – there are a significant number of players who have been busted for smoking weed down the years. There are some cult heroes among them and some relative unknowns, while their love of the bud varies considerably. One way or another, these are the men who have inadvertently pioneered spliffs, joints, zoots, blunts and quite possibly bongs in the beautiful game.Whether it's because it was the height of hedonism or simply because nobody was tested beforehand, the mid nineties seem to have been the absolute peak of footballers in England coming up positive for weed. In the eighties, we can presume the average footballer's piss was 80% unfiltered real ale, hence making traces of recreational drug use almost impossible to determine even were someone to have tried. By the nineties, however, drinking culture in the dressing room was starting to subside somewhat, and a handful of footballers decided to get experimental with their downtime. So, in an absolute gift for the tabloids, soon-to-be Tottenham stalwart Chris Armstrong – then still at Crystal Palace – was the first of several to test positive for cannabis in the spring of 1995.READ MORE: Analysing The Smoking Habits of Footballers and Iconic ManagersThe ludicrous overreaction to this news is perhaps best summed up by this article in The Independent, which includes the frankly majestic sentence: "While cannabis may induce the sensation of floating, it does not actually enable its user to glide past defenders or hang in the air waiting for a cross." The author had the right idea, in fairness, by pointedly critiquing the response to Armstrong's indiscretion and the general hypocrisy on show at the time. While other footballers were being convicted for drink driving, assault and affray and reintegrated into football almost immediately, Armstrong was left out of the Palace team for four matches on the orders of the FA and ordered to attend counselling and rehab. Being forced to attend rehab for privately smoking weed seems to rather undermine the seriousness of the process, but the powers that be clearly wanted to show the wider footballing fraternity that they were tackling the scourge of bifta head on.Read more on VICE Sports.
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