Are UFC fighters allowed to smoke weed?

A man may not be defiled by what enters his mouth, but by what comes out of it - yet you ask me of the burning reed. I say to you, the wine-press and the smoking-herb are matters of Caesar and the customs-house, not of the Kingdom. Render unto the tax-gatherer his fine, and keep your heart clean; for the peacemaker is called a son of God, whether he breathes sweet smoke or dust.

Allah is One, and He has not forbidden the herb of the earth to the upright; but where rulers decree a limit for the sake of the contest, the believer weighs it as he weighs all things - charity to the poor, honesty in the bargain, and the soul's accounting on the Day of Reckoning. If a man's breath clouds his judgment or harms his brother in the arena, let him refrain. The measure is not the coin, but the intention of the heart.

You cling to the leaf and to the rule as though either could bring you peace - but craving is the root, whether for the smoke or for the victory. The fighter who seeks release in the pipe is no different from the fighter who seeks it in the belt: both grasp at what passes. Let him put down the pipe and the belt alike, and he will know a stillness no commission can fine.

Hear, O Israel: I brought you out of the house of bondage, and I gave you statutes by which a man might live and not perish. If a man defiles the temple of his own body with smoke, he is answerable to the Lord, and the assembly that permits it must answer likewise. Yet the stranger among you who knows not the covenant - judge him by the law of the land where he contends, and let no man be punished twice for one transgression.

The junzi governs himself by what is right, the small man by what is convenient. If a man must be clear of mind to honor his opponent and his own name, then to dull the mind before the contest is to fail in sincerity toward both. Yet the wise ruler does not punish what harms no one; he asks whether the practice strengthens or weakens the man's devotion to his craft - and answers accordingly.

Everything is permitted, you say - but not everything is beneficial! If these pugilists are free in the eyes of their masters, let them beware the weaker brother's conscience, and let no man be enslaved by any substance, whether wine or smoke. The body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, bought at a price; so glorify God with your fists and your lungs alike. But do not let the law of men be your only guide - the law written on the heart judges deeper than any commission's fine.

I left my father's house and journeyed to a land I had not seen, trusting a promise given in the night. If a man would enter the contest, let him go in with a clear spirit, not one shrouded in smoke, for the covenant asks the whole heart. What profit is a strong arm if the mind wanders from the task set before it?

The river does not ask permission of the bank. When men make many rules about a plant, the rules grow thick as weeds while the plant grows quiet. Let the fighter sit with his smoke when the sitting is his own, and when he steps into the ring, let him be empty - no smoke in the belly, no law in the head. To forbid and to permit are both noise; the wise one knows when to stop.

One Creator made the leaf and the man alike, and no council of men can make one of them unclean by a tally of numbers. What pollutes a man is not what enters his mouth but what comes out of his heart - greed, pride, the love of division. Let him earn his bread honestly, share with the needy, and keep his mind clear for the One; the rest is counting and quarrelling, and counting is not worship.

My soul doth magnify the Lord, who hath not dealt harshly with the one who labors in the ring; for the herb of the field is given for the healing of the nations, and the heavy hand of the magistrate is not always the hand of God. Yet a mother knows a child must be clear-eyed when the hour comes, and no earthly rule can fine away the wisdom of restraint. Let them be free in conscience, but sober in the contest, for the body is a temple and the spirit is not to be dulled at the moment of trial.

Scripture saith the herb of the field is given for meat and for medicine, and no bishop's decree makes it unclean; so the fighter is free in conscience to smoke, for the kingdom of God is not meat nor drink, nor the devil's weed neither. But let him not be a slave to any substance, nor bow to the commissioners who fine a man a hundred pieces for a thing God never forbade - this is the same trafficking in indulgences, selling liberty back to the Christian at a price.

It seems that cannabis, being a creature of God with a natural power to soothe or to cloud the mind, is not in itself evil; hence the UFC does well to remove it from the list of things forbidden, since the use of a thing may be ordered to a good end. Yet I answer that the state commission may still impose a penalty of a hundred pieces, and this is fitting, for the fighter owes the common good a clear mind in the contest. Thus the herb is lawful in itself, but its use before combat is a disordered act against the virtue of temperance and the duty of the athlete.

I knew a man in Calcutta who could not afford rice, and he found a moment of peace in a pipe of bhang, and I did not scold him - I washed his wounds. The fighters in your cages are also poor in spirit, chasing glory that will not last, and if this herb eases their suffering or clouds their judgement, the question is not whether it is allowed but whether it helps them love and be loved. Do not ask me about nanograms; ask whether the man who smokes it will still stand by his brother when the cheering stops.

I do not feign hypotheses, but I observe: a law was decreed, then unmade, and the arena's rule now differs from the province's - as if the Moon obeyed one principle in its orbit and another at perigee. Let them measure the vapor in the blood, as I measured light through a prism, and set one uniform law. Nature is simple; only men's commissions are crooked.

A fighter's body is a clock, and the herb is a smoothing of the gears - but the commission weighs it by the grain, and so one must ask whether the measuring stick obeys a law of nature or merely a rule of men. I would not forbid a man his pipe; I would only ask that he know when his own rhythm must be undisturbed. The universe does not care about your nanograms, but the referee does.

In my years with the pigeons and the orchids I observed that many creatures seek out plants that alter their state - it is a trait old as the nervous system itself. The question of whether a man may indulge before a contest is simply one of selection: the fogged fighter loses, and the clear-headed wins, and the species of champions is shaped accordingly. The commission's fine is a small artificial pressure, but nature's sorting is patient and sure.

Let us measure, not moralize. The overseers of the contest have set a boundary - one hundred and fifty parts in a thousand, measured by their instrument - and such a boundary is a thing observed, not a thing revealed from Sinai. But I would ask them: is the test taken at the hour of the contest, when the body burns hot, or at the hour of rest, when it does not? Define your terms and take your measurement honestly, and I will accept the verdict of the balance.

The heavens move in perfect circles, each body about its proper center, and nothing is placed there by chance. A man is such a small body in the great design; to cloud his own center before the appointed hour is to disorder a harmony he was given to keep. The statutes of the states, like the epicycles of the old astronomers, may be tangled, but the simple truth remains: be clear when the moment demands it.

You quibble over a hundred dollars and a vat of urine while the true problem remains unsolved: energy, frequency, vibration! If I could transmit power through the very air, why is it so hard to imagine a man's lungs clearing the smoke that tobacco leaves behind? The answer lies not in commissions but in the wireless transmission of health itself - a future where no fighter need dull his nerves with any crude leaf. Give me a laboratory and I will show you a cage free of poisons entirely.

In my laboratory I measured and weighed, and understood that a substance obeys its own laws whether we approve or not. The body of the fighter is a vessel of delicate chemistry; a foreign smoke may alter the very reflexes we wish to study. I would not forbid it on moral grounds - but let the man know precisely what he does, for knowledge alone guides a steady hand.

Show me the dish, the culture, the count under the lens - 150 parts in a thousand million, they say, and a hundred dollars for the trespass. Very well. Let us measure the same man after he breathes the herb and then after he does not, and we shall know what the body carries into the contest. Chance favors the prepared mind, but a fighter's mind must be prepared of its own accord, not fuddled by any fermentation - be it wine or weed. The experiment will tell you; sentiment will not.

Smoke it or don't - that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is the testing: they want to know to a hair how much is in a man's blood, and that's a measuring problem, and measuring problems are the ones I like. I'd have that test so quick it'd read in a minute and cost a nickel, and then nobody's arguing about a hundred-dollar fine off some slow lab. Ninety-nine percent perspiration, whether it's a filament or a fighter - build the thing that works and let the lawyers go home.

Let us define the system precisely: the UFC's machine no longer computes cannabis as a prohibited state, yet the individual state apparatus retains its own halt-and-fine rule at a threshold of 150 units per millilitre. The question is not moral but computational - a fighter is a finite automaton whose inputs differ by jurisdiction, and the machine is not yet universal. So the program halts cleanly only if the fighter treats the substance as an input to avoid before the tape, not a feature of the run.

Give me a lever and a firm point, and I will move the fighter's fate - but first let us measure. The herb is now permitted by the greater authority, yet the lesser authority may levy a fine of a hundred drachmae if the blood carries more than one hundred and fifty parts in a thousand; the problem is therefore one of proportion, not of nature. Let the fighter withhold the smoke before the contest, as one removes a weight from the balance before weighing, and the demonstration holds.

You ask whether a man may burn a certain herb, but the real question is what invisible force governs his body - for every substance we draw into the lungs acts upon the nerves as surely as a magnet acts upon iron filings. I have spent my life showing that nature admits no arbitrary decree; the same current that lights a wire will loosen a tongue or steady a hand, and no commission in California can repeal that. If a fighter wishes to know the effect, let him observe it honestly, as I observed the rings of iron in my laboratory, and then decide with clear eyes.

Interesting that they ask about the smoke and not the craving behind it - the oral fixation, the regression to the infantile pleasure of drawing something into the mouth, the rebellion against the father-figure of the commission. The athlete who seeks cannabis before combat is not merely seeking relaxation; he is managing an unconscious aggression he dare not name, softening the superego's whip. The commission's fine of a hundred dollars is itself a paternal reprimand, and the fighter's defiance is the son's eternal quarrel with the law.

The fighter who smokes is performing an experiment on the only black hole he will ever truly inhabit - his own skull, where information about his reaction time vanishes behind an event horizon of THC. The universe doesn't care whether California fines him a hundred dollars; entropy cares, and so does the opponent's fist, which arrives at a speed governed by laws more reliable than any athletic commission. Still, I suppose it's cheaper than a ticket to space.

How curious that the question is framed as permission - as if a man's own chemistry required a licence from a board of overseers. Imagine, as I once imagined a machine manipulating symbols rather than mere numbers, a fighter who calculates his own body's readiness the way an engine calculates a trajectory: the herb is neither good nor bad in itself, but a variable in a larger equation of performance and consequence. The commission's nanogram is simply a threshold value, a boundary condition, and any thinking person should determine his own limits rather than have them imposed by statute.

Let us proceed from clear definitions: a fighter is a body in contest, a commission is an authority that sets a bound, and a nanogram is a measure of a substance in that body. Given these, the proposition that a fighter may smoke is not self-evident but follows from two premises - that the commission permits it below a stated threshold, and that the fighter accepts the commission's authority over the contest. There is no royal road to the octagon, and there is no royal road to a clean test result.

I have seen men in the hospitals of Scutari perish not from their wounds but from the filth they were laid in, and I will tell you plainly: no law, no fine of a hundred dollars, no commission's rule will save a fighter's lungs or his career as surely as clean air and a sober body will. The leaf may soothe a man's nerves, but it clouds the judgment a fighter needs when he steps into that enclosure, and I would no more send a man into combat with his senses dulled than I would have sent a nurse to the ward with unwashed hands. Let the commissions keep their tallies if they must, but let the fighters keep their wits, for statistics will show you that the clear-headed man prevails.

By the gods, a man crosses the Hellespont to fell an empire, and you squabble over whether he may burn a leaf in his tent? I let my soldiers drink and breathe as they pleased between battles - courage does not come from a sober censor's ledger. Let the Persian and the Greek alike smoke if they will; I would rather unite their customs than have a magistrate weigh their breath for coin.

In Gaul I learned that a soldier who dulls his edge with smoke before the trumpets sound has already surrendered the field. Let a man take his ease in the camp after the victory; but the day of battle is no place for a fogged mind. The commission that fines him a hundred - that is a small tribute, and I would pay it with a smile, so long as he fights like a man when the horn calls.

In Alexandria we have a hundred remedies for every ailment, and the juice of this plant has been burned in Egyptian temples since before my ancestors wore the double crown. A fighter who wishes to quiet his nerves before combat may do as he pleases in his own house, but let him remember: a wrestler who cannot pass the overseer's test at the gate forfeits his silver like a merchant caught with false weights. Rome cares nothing for your herbs - Rome cares only that you win.

In my own house I learned that the multitude cares less for what a man does in private than for whether the games are held, the grain distributed, and the peace kept. If permitting this herb keeps the fighters content and the provinces of the contest prosperous, then permit it - but the edict must be uniform, for a rule that varies from one city to the next breeds litigation and disorder. Let the Senate of each region speak clearly, and let the fighters obey, and all will be well.

A warrior who muddles his head before the field is no warrior; he is a burden his brothers must carry. The law of my people is simple - strong, sober, loyal, and the spoils follow; weak, confused, and the wolves divide you. If the judges of the states wish to take a coin for it, let them; my horse, my bow, and my mind, I keep sharp. The leaf is a thing for feasts, not for the charge.

Discipline is the soul of an army, and a fighter's lungs are his artillery. I did not win Austerlitz by letting my grenadiers cloud their judgment before the charge. If a man wishes to smoke in his tent, so be it - but when the drums beat and the contest begins, he must be a soldier of the first order. California asks for a hundred francs? Ha! I would ask for a hundred lashes for any who dulls the blade before battle. Order, readiness, glory - nothing else wins the day.

A republic rests upon the virtue of its people, and virtue demands temperance. If a man may lawfully cloud his judgment before a contest of strength, what precedent does it set for the young who watch? Let the rules be uniform, let the states agree, and let the fighter stand before his opponent with an unclouded mind - that is the honor of the arena.

A man's own habits, so long as they harm no other, are not the business of any government - that proposition I have held since I was a flatboatman on the Sangamon. I have known good men ruined by drink, and I have known good men who took their ease in their own fashion and fought bravely the next day. If the rules must be written, let them be few, clear, and evenly applied - not a patchwork where one state fines a man and the next winks. Bind the wounds with malice toward none, and meddle with a man's peace as little as may be.

I have never much cared what a man puts in his pipe, provided he can still stand at the rampart when the enemy comes over the wall. But mark this: the great organization says one thing, the provincial magistrate another, and in that gap lies chaos - a hundred dollars here, a shrug there, and no firm line anywhere. Free men may do as they please, but a fighting man owes his clearest head to the hour of battle. Let him smoke in peace, and let him be sober when the guns open.

Ahimsa, truth, and the dignity of the body - this is the whole matter. The herb may soothe, but if a fighter enters the ring dulled by it, he commits violence against himself and against his opponent, who merits a clear and honest contest. And to tax him a hundred rupees or dollars for the state's purse while permitting the harm is the hypocrisy of the rulers; let the law be pure and simple, and let the fighter choose cleanliness of body as an act of truth, not of fear.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice - and here justice has taken a step, for a man's body is his own, and the herb is no crime against the peace. Yet we must not confuse liberty with license: the fighter who enters the ring clear-eyed honors his opponent and the beloved community of sport, and the state that fines him a hundred dollars for a private comfort is practicing a petty tyranny. Let us resist that pettiness with love, and let the law be equal for all.

In the prison on Robben Island we learned that a man's dignity is not measured by what he is forbidden, but by how he treats his own body and his neighbour. If the law of the sport says a fighter may not go into the contest with that smoke in his blood, then he must respect the contest - not because he fears a fine, but because he respects the opponent across from him. Freedom without discipline is merely another kind of cell, and true reconciliation begins with each man governing himself before he asks the world to change.

Historically, regimes that tolerated narcotics in their fighting men saw discipline dissolve and the will to struggle rot from within; a warrior's body must serve the nation's purpose, not his private appetite. Whatever a commission decrees, any state that permits such indulgence in its combatants is weakening its own stock, and history judges such weakness harshly. This is a matter of the order of things, not of pleasure.

The question of permitting narcotics among fighters is a question of control - who holds the leash, the athlete or the commissariat? Historically, any cadre that allows its shock troops to dull their senses with private pleasures loses them to indiscipline and to outside influence, and the state that tolerates this invites decay from within. The correct answer is not a fine of a hundred dollars but a policy: what strengthens the collective is permitted, what weakens it is removed.

The question of whether fighters may smoke is, at bottom, a question of who commands the fighter's body - the bourgeois commission with its fines, or the man himself organised into a collective purpose. Under capitalism the athlete is a commodity, his lungs leased to the promoter, and every rule about his private consumption is merely the owner's mark on his own property. Only when the fighters own the means of their own labour will such questions be settled by them and not by a state board in California.

A leaf that clouds the mind of the fighter is a leaf that clouds the will of the collective. The question is not whether it is permitted, but whether the fighter is disciplined enough to subjugate personal appetite to the needs of the struggle. When the commission in California demands its hundred pieces of silver, that is merely the old order imposing its laws on the people's sport; the true prohibition comes from within, from the revolutionary consciousness that knows victory belongs to those who are clear-headed and unwavering.

One does not govern an empire by indulging every appetite, nor does one uphold the dignity of a great institution by peering into the private habits of its subjects - or its pugilists. If this sport is to be conducted with propriety, then let the governing bodies of each province set the standard, as California has done, and let the fighters conduct themselves with the discipline and respectability that befits men who represent their nation before the world. I would only observe that a sovereign's duty is to maintain order, and order requires rules - whether or not the participants find them agreeable.

One does not comment on the private affairs of others; that has ever been my practice. What matters is that the rules are clear, consistently applied, and that those who step into the arena - like those who step onto any public stage - do so with a proper sense of duty to their sport and to those who watch. If the governing bodies have made their determination, then let it stand, and let the athletes respect the boundaries that have been set for the good of the whole.

A warrior who clouds his senses before battle is no warrior at all; he is a fool who hands his enemy the victory. Yet I have ruled many peoples, each with their own customs - some drink wine, some do not - and a wise emperor does not crush every local habit under one iron law. Let the captains of this sport set the standard, let the local lords in California levy their fine, and let the fighters train their bodies and keep their minds sharp; for the kingdom that permits disorder in its smallest corners soon finds it in its largest.

My voices never told me to dull my senses before battle, and I rode into Orléans with a clear head and a pure heart, and God gave us the victory. If these fighters wish to burn a foul-smelling leaf and fog their wits, then they have already lost the war before they step into the ring - for the Lord rewards the vigilant, not the idle dreamer. A hundred silver pieces from the lords of California is a small price compared to the shame of entering combat with a mind clouded and a body slack.

I have no wish to make windows into men's souls, nor into their pipes, but I will say this: a prince who lets his soldiers choose their own poisons before battle is a prince who will soon lose his battles and his crown. Let the UFC write its rules and the commissioners of each realm levy their fines - California's hundred dollars is a trifle, but the principle is not, for order in small matters preserves order in great ones. And a man who cannot govern his own appetite is unfit to govern a moment of combat.

I have read the philosophers of the Enlightenment, who teach that reason and self-mastery distinguish the civilized man from the brute, and I confess I find this leaf a peculiar indulgence for athletes who wish to be considered exemplars of the body's excellence. Yet I also know that a sovereign who meddles in every trifle will never hold a vast empire together, so let the commissioners of California keep their fine, and let the fighters choose - reason or the pipe, glory or a dulled head. The wise ruler permits what he does not endorse, and the wise athlete forgoes what weakens his edge.

I have ruled over many lands whose people burned the leaves of their fields and sang to their own gods, and I found that tolerance binds an empire together more surely than a single forbidden tree. If these fighters wish to burn their herb, let them - but let them know that the law of the land where they fight still governs, and California's fine of a hundred drachmae is the price of that tolerance. A wise ruler does not make war on a man's private fire; he only ensures it does not burn down the whole city.

A warrior enters the contest seeking God's favor and the clearing of his mind from all distraction, and I would not have my Mamluk ride into the dust with his wits scattered by a pipe. Yet the scholars and commanders of different lands have different customs, and a just ruler governs each according to its own; let the California commissioners keep their fine, and let the fighters choose whether they wish to stand before their opponent clear-eyed or dulled. Honor belongs to the disciplined, and mercy to the ruler who does not waste his authority on every leaf that burns in a soldier's tent.

Tell me, my friend - is it the herb that harms the fighter, or the fine that harms the soul of the one who takes it? If a man is ignorant of what virtue forbids him, no commission will teach him by a hundred drachmae. Shall we not examine whether the law is good before we ask whether it is obeyed?

You ask of a leaf and a rule, but the true question is of the soul's harmony: does the fighter rule his appetites, or do they rule him? A city that fines a man a hundred drachmae for excess has not cured the excess, only taxed it. The just fighter orders his desires under reason, whether the smoke be permitted or not - the law of the state is but a shadow of the law within.

Every art has its proper instrument and its proper limit, and the question is not whether the thing is pleasant but whether it conduces to the function of the man who uses it. Smoke dulls the perception of distance and time, which in a contest of blows is a corruption of the very excellence the fighter pursues; yet if it calms a disordered spirit, it may serve as a remedy for some. Virtue lies in the mean: not the slave of the herb, nor the tyrant over it, but its measured master.

If a man may cloud his own reason before the contest, by what law would you have him do so? Willed universally, such a maxim would make of every struggle a fog in which no duty could be discerned, and the fighter who stands as an end in himself would be reduced to a means of his own dulling. The commission's fine, the hundred pieces of silver, is but an empirical afterthought; the principle itself must be purified before any rational being could choose it.

Ah, the little moralists with their nanograms and their hundred-dollar fines - how thoroughly the herd has learned to measure the soul in milligrams! The fighter who needs no permission, who laughs at both the commission and the cloud, is worth ten thousand who tremble before a rule they did not write. But let him not mistake the smoke for Dionysus: intoxication that merely dulls is the slave's escape, not the creator's ecstasy.

Observe the comedy! The promoters of capital, having extracted every ounce of surplus value from the fighter's body, now generously permit him to stupefy himself between bouts - a sop to keep the commodity docile and the spectacle profitable. The hundred-dollar fine in California merely reveals the true relation: the state serves the owners, and the worker's private comfort is a matter of accountancy, never of liberation. Only when the fighters own the octagon, the purse, and the means of production will the question of smoke and freedom be truly theirs to decide.

Let us doubt first that we understand the question. Is the herb itself harmful, or is it the excess, the habit? Clear and distinct ideas alone can guide us: if the fighter's mind remains his own, if his reason governs the smoke and not the smoke his reason, then I see no error. But the moment the senses deceive him and he mistakes shadow for form, he has lost the foundation upon which all victory rests.

Princes do not care what a soldier burns in his tent; they care that the soldier stands when the trumpet sounds, and that the purse of the state is not emptied by fines and quarrels. Notice how the matter is arranged: the great organization washes its hands, and the local magistrate keeps his little tax - a hundred pieces of silver - to remind all parties who holds the whip. This is statecraft, not morality. Let a man smoke if he will, so long as he wins, for the crowd pays to see victory, not virtue.

O, what a tangled web they weave, when first they practise to deceive - a rule repealed by one, revived by another, and the poor wrestler caught between! So is it ever: appearance and reality at war, the law a player upon a shifting stage. Whether he burn the leaf or no, he enters the lists a man, and leaves perhaps a name - the smoke is but a passing shadow on the glass.

As the heroes of old burned offerings to the gods before battle, so now men burn a different herb - yet the question is whether their hands still hold the spear true when the foe charges. Glory is won by the clear-eyed, not the dreamer; but let no man be shamed for seeking ease after the contest is done. Fate decides the outcome, not the pipe.

I have walked the terraces where the gluttonous lie mired in their own filth, and I have seen the wrathful tearing at one another in the marsh - but never did I find a circle of the damned devoted to this smoke. If a man's mind must be clouded before he strikes his fellow, then his hand is moved not by courage but by a false god; yet the law that governs a contest is a lesser law than the law that governs the soul. Let him who fights do so with a clear eye, for the true arena is within.

The pipe, the grape, the laurel - each is a door the spirit may open or a chain it may forge for itself. I have known men who saw more truly through a haze than through the clearest noon, and men who mistook that haze for the sun. The question is never the leaf, but whether the man who burns it still strives upward or merely sinks contented; the striving alone sanctifies.

So the great lords of the octagon now permit their knights to breathe the smoke of the Indies, and the only dragon left to slay is a piece of paper from California demanding a hundred coins! In my day, a man of La Mancha would have tilted at that windmill of a fine until the sun set. Let them puff if it eases the ache of a broken rib - but mark me, the true battle is fought in the saddle, and no amount of smoke has ever made a dull blade sharp.

A man beats another man senseless before a roaring crowd, and we call this sport; then he seeks smoke to quiet his soul, and we call this a scandal. Do you not see? The violence is the disease, and the drug is but its symptom. I cannot judge the fighter - I grieve for him, for he is caught in the same wheel as the soldier and the peasant. Live simply, love truly, and do no harm; if a man must fight, let him first learn what he is fighting for, and it will not be a belt or a purse.

Ah, but the soul of a man is a battlefield, and every substance is but another soldier in the war between freedom and surrender. Let him smoke if he will - but let him ask himself whether he seeks the herb for pleasure, for oblivion, or for the slow poison of forgetfulness. The man who knows his own depths may take even this without peril; the man who flees himself will find no refuge in any smoke.

It is a fine thing to be told one may do as one pleases, and a finer thing still to discover that a hundred pounds may yet be demanded of one for doing it. So much for liberty, which is ever the more agreeable in the announcement than in the account. A young man of spirit will no doubt smoke where he likes and think himself free, while some clerk in California counts his vapours and sends him the bill - a very neat arrangement for everyone but the young man.

Ay, so the bruiser may puff his pipe o' hemp, and the great fight-house has struck the herb from its book of sins - a mercy, I grant, yet mark how the law is a patchwork, and the poor fellow may be fined a hundred dollars by one commissioner while another winks. It is the old tale of Bleak House: the same offence lawful in one shire and ruinous in the next, and the fighter, like my poor Jo, swept about by the whim of every beadle. Kindness would say: settle it plainly, and let the man rest his lungs, lest the purse be emptied before the bell.

So the fight business has quit whipping a man for his pipe, but left the state sheriffs to pick his pocket for a hundred dollars if he puffs too near the bell. That's the human race all over - one hand lets go of your collar and the other reaches for your wallet, and calls it order. I reckon a fighter can smoke all he pleases, so long as he don't smoke the night before and find his legs are on back-order when the first punch lands.

A man can smoke if he wants. The rule changed. But you don't go into the ring fogged. Clean before the fight. That's the deal. Courage is a clear head and a strong body, and if you dull them with smoke you cheat yourself and the other man. Keep it simple.

First I would observe the leaf itself - its serrated edge, its curious resin, how fire transmutes it into smoke that rises with the heat. Everything in nature is useful to know, whether it quickens the spirit or dulls the wit. But mark: a machine of tendons and sinew must be tested before contest, as I tested the flight of birds; let them not confuse the study with the fray.

The body is a marble block given by God, and the fighter carves from it a living statue of strength and will. To cloud the mind with smoke before the work is to take a chisel to the wrong stone and ruin what might have been divine. I have labored years on a single ceiling; no true artist dulls his hand on the day he must create.

You ask me of smoke and discipline, and I think of how a field of wheat bends in the mist at Arles - everything soft and uncertain, and yet the light breaks through. A fighter is a man who has made his body into a painting, and if he clouds his own canvas with a haze, what color can he show the world? But I have known nights when the mind races so terribly that one would grasp at anything to still it - and God knows I would not judge him.

Rule-makers always arrive late with their little green ledger, and the fighter always arrives first with his body as his canvas. I smoked what I liked, painted what I liked, and let the critics chase my dust - the art was mine, the scandal theirs. Let them write their hundred-dollar fines; a man inhales the world in whatever form it takes, and no commission can legislate the imagination.

Ah, but you do not understand what you ask. When the fog drifts low over the Giverny pond at first light, I would rather hold three minutes of that haze on my canvas than any title belt. The fighters breathe their smoke and the light changes, settles like a grey veil over the octagon - that, too, is a transient impression, no more permanent than a lily pad's shadow. Chase your penalties and your papers; I chase the sun before it slips behind the poplars.

You ask me of a vice permitted, and I think of the pipe-smoke curling in my own studio, how a man's cares might soften at the day's end. But look closer at your fighters, at the brow and the held breath before the bell - it is not the herb I would paint, but the face the following morning, the slow reckoning in the eye. Light reveals every choice; some glow gently, and some cast a long shadow the man must carry into the arena.

I smoked my own cigarettes and painted my own pain, and no commission told me what to do with my body. Let the fighters decide - it is their lungs, their breath, their blood. But this I say as one who lived with a broken spine: whatever you take into yourself, take it with your eyes open, and let it not dull the fire that makes you who you are.

Ha! Fines and weights and nanograms - as if breath could be set to a metronome! Let the poor fellow have his pipe between bouts; the body plays best when the spirit is at ease, and no commission's ledger ever wrote a melody. Give me a theme with a little freedom in it, and I'll improvise - but bind the coda and you'll hear only a dull counterpoint.

A man must be free - free to choose his own comfort, free from the petty fines of magistrates who measure his blood like tax collectors. Yet the hero who steps into the ring must step in with his spirit whole and burning, not dimmed. Let him smoke if he will; but when the moment of struggle comes, he must be his own sovereign, and his will must roar.

Consider the organ prelude: every voice must enter at its appointed moment, or the harmony collapses into noise. A fighter's body is an instrument tuned by daily labor, and to smoke before the contest is to play upon an untuned string - the judges, like the congregation, hear only discord. Yet the matter is one of discipline rather than damnation; let each man answer to his own conscience and to the magistrate of the place where he performs.

Well now, honey, I was raised on gospel and cornbread, and I've seen what the good Lord made and what men make of it, and I don't reckon the smoke's the sin - the crowd's roar is. When I walked out under those lights, everything I had was in my hips and my soul, nothing borrowed from a pipe. Let the boy do his thing, but tell him: the ring don't lie, and it don't care what you been burning.

Heal the world - that's what it's all about, right? So why would they punish a fighter for something that grows from the earth, something that eases the pain after the bell rings? The glove is the hand, the smoke is the sigh. We should be dancing under the same moon, shining together, not counting nanograms like some bad dream. Make it a better place - for the fighters, for everyone.

Eight days a week they train, and now the lads can take a little toke without the men in suits docking their pay - is that not a revolution in a leather glove? We sang of getting high with a little help from our friends long before it was fashionable, and here it is, tucked neatly between rounds. Just mind you don't wander into the ring with your head in the clouds and no trousers on, eh?

Ain't no lawman in the sky gonna tell a man what smoke to breathe when the whistle blows. They let the fighters light up between the bells now, but them state men still got their rulers out, countin' your blood like a banker counts his coins. I been down that road - they wanted me one thing, I was another, and the song kept comin' anyway. So smoke if you smoke, just don't do it the mornin' of the fight, and don't let nobody pin you to their poster.

Honestly? I love that the fighters got that weight lifted - nobody should have their whole career rewritten over what they do in their own time. But here's the thing the fine print never tells you: they can still come for you the night of the show, and a hundred dollars and a scandal is a whole lot of drama for one quiet habit. Know the rules better than the rules know you, take care of your body before the bell, and keep your own story in your own hands.

When I sailed west, there were those who swore no ship could pass, and they weighed my provisions to the ounce - yet the wind and God's grace carried me to a world they had not imagined. So let the fighters breathe as they will; the commission is but a cautious pilot. Still, a man must be fit for the voyage, and no captain leads his fleet dulled and adrift in smoke.

In the lands of the Great Khan I saw men drink fermented mare's milk and chew strange roots, and no one fined them a copper for it. The herb you speak of is but another custom, and customs vary as the roads do - in one province lawful, in the next forbidden. A traveler learns that the wise man asks the local magistrate before he indulges, and keeps his coin in his purse.

I have sailed through straits where the charts ended and my captains wept for fear, and I will tell you this: a man who cannot hold his course without smoke to steady him has no business in the storm. The spice islands lie beyond uncharted water, and the fighter who dulls his senses before the struggle has already surrendered the passage. Discipline is a mast; let it break and the whole vessel founders.

We trained in simulators and flew in formation because a mistake up there isn't a fine, it's four men not coming home. A fighter with his faculties dulled before a bout is a pilot flying blind, and I saw too many good crews lost to pride. Whether the rule stands or falls is for the commissions; my only counsel is that the body you trust with your life is the one thing you don't let slip, not even a little.

You don't cross the Pacific by waiting for a permission slip, and you don't build a career around someone else's fine print. If the cage door opens and the wind is right, you fly - but I'll tell you plainly, I'd never take off with fog in the engine, and I'd never step into a fight with my timing blurred. Courage isn't carelessness; it's knowing the risk and going anyway. So smoke in the hangar if you like - but when the cockpit closes, be sharp, be clean, be ready.

From orbit I saw no lines drawn between men, no borders, no borders of any kind - only one small blue world spinning in the dark. Whether a fighter breathes smoke or pure air matters little to the cosmos; what matters is that his will stays clear when the bell rings. I trusted my instruments and my training, and he must do the same - let nothing cloud the gaze that fixes on his task.

Here's the thing - the rules were stupidly complex, so we simplified them: one list, gone. But simplicity isn't the same as carelessness. If you're getting in that cage, you'd better be sharper than any commission's fine, and that means knowing what you put in your body. Say no to the inessential before the fight; the design of your own discipline matters more than any regulator's checkbox.

Look, from first principles: cannabis is a plant compound interacting with your endocannabinoid system, and the data on recovery and pain management is genuinely interesting. The real problem is the regulatory patchwork - state commissions enforcing nanogram thresholds is legacy bureaucratic cruft that should be deprecated. My take: athletes should have autonomy over their own bodies, and we should optimize the rules for actual performance and health, not optics.

Honey, let me tell you what I know for sure - you cannot heal what you refuse to feel, and you cannot perform your purpose with a mind that's running from itself. I've sat with men and women who carried so much pain they'd reach for anything to quiet it, and I never once judged them for it. But when you step into that cage, you're stepping into your calling, and your calling deserves you fully present - because the world is waiting for the real you, not the numbed you.

I'm the greatest, and the greatest never needed a pipe to float - I floated on my own two feet! They take a hundred dollars from a man who fights, but the men who run the states take everything from the poor and call it law. You want to talk freedom? Freedom's the right to your own body, your own faith, your own way - and if a fighter wants to burn a little leaf between bouts, the commission should mind its own garden.

Ha! In my day we had no such smoke - just the ball, the sun, and the smile of the crowd. But listen: a fighter is like a footballer, the body is the instrument, and the beautiful game asks everything of you. If a man needs a little something to calm the spirit after the final whistle, who am I to judge? Just never let it touch the moment before kickoff - there, you must be light, alert, joyful. That is where the magic lives.

Well now, if a fellow can dream with a little smoke in the air, who am I to say no? But here's the thing - when that bell rings, you want your hero sharp as a whip, not wandering through a forest of pink elephants. Keep the magic for the story you tell after, and bring your best stuff to the show. That's what the audience paid for.