Pacman Jones: I Never Took an Honest Drug Test

Ex-NFL player Adam "Pacman" Jones has long been a vocal marijuana advocate, even bragging that he'd smoked before games. Now, the retired Cincinnati Bengals cornerback is revealing how he got around the NFL's drug testing program while he was a player. "I cheated the program," Jones admitted on Deion Sanders' weekly Tubi show, We Got Time Today, per USA Today. "Like, I was really good. People don't know how smart I am, but, like, I can say it now. I don't play no more." He then confessed: "I've never used my [urine] for a [urine] test. Not one time. Not one time."

When Sanders tried to minimize the chances of such deception taking place today, with all of the measures the NFL has in place to prevent that, Jones laughed that off. "It can happen if you know what you're doing," Jones insisted. "Don't say it can't happen, Pop." Sanders' co-host, Rocsi Diaz, was intrigued by Jones' confidence, pushing him more on how a football player could avoid detection—and Jones started to answer, but the teetotaler Sanders shut him down before he could spill his secrets.

Sports Illustrated notes that Jones had been suspended twice by the football league, though not for drug use. One suspension was for the entire 2007 season, after "a number of off-the-field incidents and run-ins with the law," per USA Today. The other suspension, for six games, came in 2008 for an alcohol-tied incident during his stint with the Dallas Cowboys. Jones reminded Sanders and Diaz during the show that pot isn't considered a performance-enhancing drug, and that many players use marijuana to ease their aches and pains.

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"I'm all for the weed," he said, adding that "no sport" should be doing tests for THC. NBC News cites another football player's determined attempt to keep drug testers in the dark: In 2005, while playing for the Minnesota Vikings, running back Onterrio Smith was busted at a Minnesota airport with a "Whizzinator"—a fake penis filled with untainted urine. In June of that year, Smith was suspended from the game for the season for multiple violations of the league's substance abuse policy. (More NFL stories.)