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NFL passively condones killing but condemns pot use
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So Dante Stallworth got his suspension from the NFL. The suspension comes not from killing a person while driving drunk, but rather from the simple fact that tests showed that he had smoked marijuana.
Could it be that the NFL wants to send this very strong and hypocritcal message about drug use? Well, it couldn't have picked a worse case to do so. Mr. Stallworth is the subject of much speculation that if you kill somebody while drunk in Miami you get one punishment if you are a rich and powerful athlete and another if you are not.
While he was facing the prospect of years in prison, Mr. Stallworth walked away with 30 days in jail, aka a slap on the wrist. And the NFL didn't suspend him indefinitely for that. The NFL waited and ultimately suspended him for smoking pot.
How absurd. A Florida DUI lawyer blogged about it in the article: Donte Stallworth Convicted of DUI Manslaughter Tested Positive for Marijuana. The attorney's thesis seems to be that if you get busted for killing somebody while hammered, if you have the right attorney you can get out of it. Sounds like a fair and accurate observation.
Elsewhere I have argued that the NFL says ok to kill while DUI but no smoking pot. Don't take me literally here (I can hear the nasty things that people will be calling me in comments already). But everything that professional sports organizations do is a message to some impressionable child.
So what's going on with the NFL? Were they just looking for a reason to suspend him and couldn't technically do it based on just getting drunk and killing another human being? If so, I hope that they make it clear that the marijuana suspension is a pretext.
