Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program

The Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program is an agreed upon set of procedures governing baseball's drug testing and response to positive tests and other drug violations, such as purchasing or possessing banned substances. The Program is established by the "Joint-Drug Agreement", the document stating Major League Baseball's policies and procedures regarding both performance enhancing drugs and drugs of abuse. It is negotiated between the Commissioner's Office and the Major League Baseball Players Association. New agreements have been negotiated in late 2005 and again in late 2011, and most off-seasons there are small tweaks worked out. The current agreement was renewed at the time of the most recent Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations in 2022.

The Agreement had been amended after the 2019 season to add testing for opioids, in the wake of the death of P Tyler Skaggs the previous summer. The objective was not to punish players testing positive, but to provide them with treatment before the problem leads to tragic consequences. At the same time, cannabis was removed from the list of banned substances, in recognition of the fact that the substance was now legal in Canada and in a growing number of jurisdictions in the United States, and does not have and performance-enhancing properties.

Suspensions of players found guilty of PED use are handed out as a result of provisions of the program. Those include a 50-game suspension for first-time offenders, 100 games for a second offence and a permanent ban for a third offence. All suspensions can be appealed to the Arbitrator who is jointly designated by MLB and the MLBPA and do not have to be served until after the appeals process has been completed.

Related Sites

The Agreement at MLB's website: http://mlb.mlb.com/pa/pdf/jda.pdf