All these New York Giants with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder really need to get their prescription paperwork straightened out.
For the third time this year, a Giants player who is caught up in the NFL’s performance-enhancing drug policy has said that the prescription drug Adderall is the culprit. This time it’s Giants safety Will Hill, who will begin serving a four-game suspension today.
“Shortly after signing with the team, I was in a meeting with [director of player development] Charles Way, who reviewed the list of the league’s banned substances. I knew at that point that this may be an issue,” Hill said in a statement. “I was tested and the results came back that Adderall was in my system. I appealed but lost the appeal.”
Hill will now go on the reserve/suspended list, and his spot on the 53-man roster will be taken up by Tyler Sash, who is just returning from a four-game suspension for what he says was a positive test for -- you guessed it -- Adderall. Earlier this year Giants running back Andre Brown successfully appealed a suspension that he, too, said was for testing positive for Adderall.
The NFL considers Adderall a performance-enhancing substance, but it allows players to take it if they go through the proper channels and can demonstrate a medical need to use it. The problem is that many players seem to be misinformed about what the proper channels are for approval.
The other problem is that, because the NFL insists on confidentiality about all performance-enhancing drug tests, a player who tests positive for anabolic steroids could claim publicly that all he tested positive for was Adderall, and the NFL would be bound by confidentiality and unable to point out publicly that the player was lying.
Perhaps now we’ve reached the point where Adderall suspensions have received enough publicity that every NFL player understands he has to seek approval before taking Adderall. Or maybe we should just assume that every player who gets suspended from now on is going to blame Adderall, whether that’s what he took or not.
