Tens of thousands of people have already signed the \u201cSecure Brittney Griner\u2019s Swift and Safe Return to the US\u201d petition on Change.org<\/a>. Journalist Tamryn Spruill, who covers women\u2019s basketball, initiated the online signature campaign, writing: \u201cGriner is a beloved global citizen who has used her platform since her entry into the WNBA to help others.\u201d<\/p>\n Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who played football at the same university where Griner played basketball, says he\u2019s working with the State Department to secure her release. But he admitted to ESPN<\/a>: \u201cObviously, it\u2019s also happening in the context of really strained relations. I do think that it\u2019s really unusual that we\u2019ve not been granted access to her from our embassy and our consular services.\u201d<\/p>\n And a member of the US House Armed Services Committee acknowledged that \u201cit\u2019s going to be very difficult\u201d to get Griner out of Russia. \u201cOur diplomatic relationships with Russia are nonexistent at the moment,\u201d Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) told CNN<\/a> on March 7.<\/p>\n There\u2019s clearly a risk that Griner\u2019s case could become politicized. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) has openly suggested that Griner was targeted because she is an American.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m closely monitoring reports of Texan @brittneygriner\u2019s detention in Russia,\u201d Castro tweeted<\/a>. Referring to a US Marine who has been detained in Russia for more than two years, Castro added: \u201cThis follows a pattern of Russia wrongly detaining & imprisoning US citizens, including Trevor Reed. US citizens are not political pawns. Brittney, Trevor, and other Americans must be safely returned.\u201d<\/p>\n Trevor Reed was convicted on charges of confronting a police officer\u2014which he denies. He has gone on hunger strike<\/a> at the penal colony where he\u2019s being held in Mordovia region, and his health has dramatically deteriorated. But there have been many others\u2014including some arrested for cannabis, like Griner. We\u2019ve noted the case<\/a> of American teacher Marc Fogel, who was detained at Moscow\u2019s airport in August 2021 with a small amount of cannabis that he used medicinally. He faces up to two decades in prison if convicted. <\/p>\n In 2019 was the egregious case<\/a> of Naama Issachar, an American-Israeli woman similarly snared at the Moscow airport with a small amount of cannabis. Her release to Israel was won, by all appearances, in a deal between Russia and Israel to favor Moscow in a dispute with NATO member Poland. <\/p>\n At the current juncture, there are inestimably more weighty issues in play than a diplomatic spat. <\/p>\n One potential complicating factor already presents itself. The team Griner had been playing for in Russia, UMMC Ekaterinburg, is owned by Uzbekistan-born businessman Iskander Makhmudov. And as NPR<\/a> notes, Makhmudov is named as one of the oligarchs tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin who may be sanctioned under the Putin Accountability Act,<\/a> now pending before Congress. <\/p>\n Some have gone so far as to suggest that Griner was set up so that she could be exploited to exact concessions from the West. <\/p>\n \u201cWith all the problems with Russia and them attacking Ukraine, has Brittney become a political bargaining chip?\u201d asked Debbie Jackson, Griner\u2019s high school basketball coach, in comments to The New York Times<\/a>. \u201cIs this part of politics?\u201d<\/p>\n Griner also has big cultural factors going against her. Russia has unforgiving cannabis laws, and Putin\u2019s consolidation of autocratic power has included a harsh crackdown on cannabis and other illegal drugs. <\/p>\n Griner\u2019s status as a voice for the global LGBTQ community is another quality that won\u2019t endear her to Putin. Griner is the first out gay athlete to win an endorsement contract<\/a> from Nike. In her memoir, In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court<\/em><\/a>, Griner wrote about<\/a> her youthful experiences at Texas\u2019 Baptist-\u00adaffiliated Baylor University, which had an official policy against homosexuality at the time. LGBTQ students at Baylor say they still face discrimination<\/a>.<\/p>\n The LGBTQ community in Russia continues to suffer increased harassment and discrimination. The country\u2019s leading gay rights group, the Russian LGBT Network<\/a>, was the latest to be targeted in the government\u2019s current campaign to shut down independent rights groups. Last month, the Ministry of Justice accused the advocacy group of threatening \u201ctraditional values\u201d and called for a court order to \u201cliquidate\u201d it along with its sponsor, the Sphere Foundation. In a rare case of judicial independence, the court turned down the government\u2019s request.<\/p>\n A controversial Anti-Propaganda Law passed in 2013 prohibits \u201cpromoting non-traditional sexual relations to minors.\u201d The law has been used to facilitate police repression<\/a> of gay rights demonstrations. In 2021, the Ministry of Internal Affairs opened an investigation<\/a> against Netflix for possible violation of the Anti-Propaganda Law.<\/p>\n In 2015, Russia passed a law<\/a> barring transsexuals, \u201cexhibitionists\u201d and \u201cfetishists\u201d from driving, finding that such \u201cmental disorders\u201d make them more likely to crash. <\/p>\n In the 2020 constitutional reform<\/a> that essentially allowed Putin to remain president for life, the charter was also amended with language<\/a> defining marriage as \u201cthe union of a man and woman,\u201d barring same-sex matrimony. The reform package also included a proclamation<\/a> of Russians\u2019 faith in God.<\/p>\n The atmosphere in Putin\u2019s Russia is anti-woman, as well as oppressively anti-gay. In January 2017, Russia\u2019s parliament voted 380-3 to decriminalize domestic violence<\/a> in cases where it doesn\u2019t cause \u201csubstantial bodily harm\u201d and doesn\u2019t occur more than once a year. The move eliminates criminal liability in such cases, making it a violation punishable by a fine of around $500, or a 15-day arrest, provided there\u2019s no repeat offense within 12 months. A Kremlin mouthpiece told journalists that family conflicts \u201cdon\u2019t necessarily constitute domestic violence.\u201d<\/p>\n The government is also using a new \u201cforeign agents law<\/a>\u201d to order the closure<\/a> of human rights and opposition groups. <\/p>\n The Russian Federation\u2019s southern republic of Chechnya has particularly been a laboratory of the fast-consolidating Russian police state. In 2017, horrific reports emerged from Chechnya that authorities were rounding up gays in camps and subjecting them to torture\u2014the first time that kind of thing had happened in Europe since Nazi Germany. Soon, the reign of terror was extending to drug users and small-time dealers who began facing grisly abuses at the hands of Chechen security forces as part of the same ultra-puritanical campaign. Reports described the use electric shock to induce suspects to \u201cconfess.\u201d <\/p>\n The Russian LGBT Network is still calling for the release<\/a> of gay and gender-non-conforming youth being held in Chechen detention centers on various transparently bogus charges.<\/p>\n Griner\u2019s case also touches on the contentious question of the gross pay inequality for women in US sports. Male NBA players receive guaranteed million-dollar contracts, while WNBA players frequently have to moonlight for foreign teams to keep the cash coming in. <\/p>\n Griner had been playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg during the WNBA\u2019s off-season to make more money since 2015. Last year, she helped the team win its fifth EuroLeague Women<\/a> championship. Even after a 2020 agreement with the Women\u2019s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA), the average income of a WNBA player is less than $130,000, with salaries topping out at around $500,000, as CNN<\/a> reports.<\/p>\n On the Change.org petition, Tamryn Spruill explains: \u201cLike many athletes competing in the WNBA, Griner plays abroad during the WNBA offseason because her salary is exponentially higher in other countries.\u201d <\/p>\n Peniel Joseph is the author of The Third Reconstruction: America\u2019s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century<\/em><\/a>. In a commentary for CNN<\/a> on the case, he writes: \u201cWhile Griner\u2019s fame and privilege could shield her somewhat, her identity as a Black gay woman athlete facing the Russian legal system is a precarious one, and as the war intensifies and diplomatic options wane, Americans must not look away.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Brittney Griner, America\u2019s famed female basketball player, won Olympic Gold in both Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and Tokyo in 2020, and is a leading light of the Women\u2019s National Basketball Association. But she made distinctly unenviable headlines, when she was arrested for cannabis in Russia last month. Russian authorities announced that there was an undetermined number of vape pens full of cannabis oil in her luggage at Moscow\u2019s Sheremetyevo International Airport. The exact date of Griner\u2019s arrest remains unclear, as does the number of cartridges found. This information wasn\u2019t revealed in the March 5 press release from Russia\u2019s Federal Customs Service… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marijuana_information"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Brittney](\"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/will-brittney-griners-cannabis-bust-become-putins-geopolitical-pawn.jpg\")
<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWill Griner Become Putin\u2019s Pawn?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
![](\"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/will-brittney-griners-cannabis-bust-become-putins-geopolitical-pawn-1.jpg\")
<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nPutin\u2019s Anti-Cannabis, Anti-LGBTQ, Anti-Woman Police State<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Griner Also Victim of Pay Inequity for Women in US Sports<\/strong><\/h4>\n