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The NCAA, like individual states, is facing the question of how to handle marijuana use. (Photo illustration by marijuana.com)

Altee Tenpenny's 15 minutes of infamy thanks to pot is so 15 minutes ago.

The Alabama running back got arrested March 24 for marijuana possession during a routine traffic stop back home in North Little Rock, Ark.

That hardly makes him unique.

Since his arrest, Auburn football commit Jason Smith was arrested for marijuana possession early Sunday morning in Mobile.

Former Louisville basketball player Chane Behanan, who's transferred to Colorado State, was cited for marijuana possession early Wednesday morning in Louisville.

The Milwaukee Bucks announced Friday that center Larry Sanders will be suspended five games without pay for violating the NBA's drug policy. His offense, according to his own admission in a statement released by the team: Using marijuana.

Read the headlines from the sports world for any length of time, and you realize that as frequent as these stories may be, they're only the cases of users dumb enough to get arrested or fail a drug test.

Makes you wonder. Is there a college or professional athlete out there who doesn't smoke pot? Anyone?

That's obviously an exaggeration, but consider the NCAA's 2013 National Study of Substance Use Habits of College Student-Athletes. As it does every four years, the NCAA surveyed about 21,000 student-athletes across all sports and divisions and allowed them to remain anonymous.

One of the questions asked the student-athletes if they'd ever used any of nine substances: ephedrine, anabolic steroids, cocaine, synthetic marijuana, amphetamines, cigarettes, spit tobacco, marijuana and alcohol.

The two substances that had been used at least once by the most survey respondents: alcohol (85.2 percent) and marijuana (32.9 percent). Among those student-athletes surveyed, 22 percent said they'd used marijuana in the last year.

And those were just the respondents honest enough to admit it.

Now that two states, Washington and Colorado, have legalized the recreational use of marijuana and other states are considering it, is it time for the NCAA to consider taking it off the list of banned substances?

Think about it.

Is marijuana a performance-enhancing drug? No. Says who? Mary Wilfert, the NCAA associate director for health and safety. In 2012, she told ESPN.com, "If anything, marijuana might be a performance detractor."

But last year, the NCAA reduced the amount of the active ingredient in marijuana that will trigger a positive test to a third of the previous threshold, from 15 to five nanograms per milliliter. At the same time, the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports recommended that the penalty for a positive test at a bowl game or NCAA championship be reduced from a one-year suspension to a half-year.

Even the proposed lighter penalty is much harsher than the penalties imposed by individual schools, who tend to lean toward treatment and counseling rather than the loss of playing time, especially after a student-athlete's first positive test.

There's an interesting twist on this subject playing out right now out west. At the moment, though it may be legal to use marijuana in Colorado and Washington, it's still a banned substance there for student-athletes.

Does that make sense?

Not to some NCAA leaders. Last August, several members of the NCAA Division III Presidents Council suggested the NCAA get out of the business of testing for street drugs completely, leaving it to the states and individual schools to legislate.

It'll be interesting to see which way the NCAA as a whole goes. Will it take the lead and take marijuana off its banned-substance list to focus instead on reducing the use of performance-enhancing drugs such as anabolic steroids?

Or will we see more states legalize it while the NCAA and individual schools continue to test and punish for it?

Surveys, suspensions for undisclosed violations of team rules and arrest reports make one thing clear. Athletes are smoking pot. Meanwhile, attitudes about it are softening. In the war on drugs, marijuana appears to be winning.