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Dope pedallers nabbed smuggling marijuana in bike tyres

Seven pounds of drugs stuffed into tyres of two bikes

Here's a new twist on the drugs problem in cycling. US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) officials have nabbed a couple of teenagers who were attempting to smuggle marijuana hidden inside the tyres of their bikes.

The teenage dope pedallers, a male and female aged 17, were detected by a USCBP sniffer dog at the border post in Douglas, Arizona.

Officials found about seven pounds of marijuana in the tyres of the couple's bikes.

Filling your tyres with plant material is a well-known emergency measure for mountain bikers stranded without a spare tube, but this form of grass is a bit pricy to use for that; the haul was worth an estimated $3,400 (£2,300).

Douglas sits in a valley at a shade over 4,000 feet above sea level, but officials did not reveal how high the smugglers got on their Mexican shopping trip.

Marijuana use in sport is controlled under the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) code. In 2013 WADA raised the threshold for a positive test from 15 to 150 nanograms per milliliter, a level that would require an athlete to be a "pretty dedicated cannabis consumer" to test positive, Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) told USA Today.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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11 comments

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pedalpowerDC | 8 years ago
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For people who are self-medicating for ADHD-type disorders, it is performance enhancing. They aren't getting high, they are getting calm enough to focus on racing, which may be hard to understand for those of us who couldn't fathom functioning properly with that combination. But, the "performance enhancement" they are getting is really only taking them back to a baseline concentration level that's probably normal for most people. I would think that may be the main reason WADA changed the threshold.

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kobacom | 8 years ago
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How is Marijuana performance enhancing, if it was I should have gone like the clappers in my younger days, I didn't, still don't.

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Airzound | 8 years ago
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Dopers will try anything to win ……..

I hope the tyres were SMP+.

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manmachine | 8 years ago
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The ridiculousness of marijuana being illegal in the first place. UFB...I can only hope those kids don't get put away for a long time. Though I won't be too hopeful with regard to Western Nazi Governments and their corporate created paper laws.

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portec | 8 years ago
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Shouldn't they be smuggling fat bikes instead?

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twowheeltoys | 8 years ago
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At last, a bike actually worth more than £2k.
Shame the new Astana Team Model looks a bit of a clunker, don’t think it will catch on.

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vonhelmet | 8 years ago
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I remember reading about people stuffing tyres with grass when in desperate need in the wake of a puncture, but this is absurd.

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Mungecrundle | 8 years ago
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Now I understand the move to wider tyres in the pro peloton.

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ct | 8 years ago
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Albert Richter - fascinating story

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Manchestercyclist | 8 years ago
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There was a German sprinter who got caught and killed by the NAZIs trying to smuggle currency into Switzerland in his tyres.

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RobD | 8 years ago
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Haha, good article

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