Nick Kyrgios has been provisionally suspended from professional tennis after testing positive for a metabolite of cocaine at the Mallorca Championships in June.
According to the International Tennis Integrity Agency’s announcement, Kyrgios provided a sample on 22 June during the ATP 250 tournament. A World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratory reported on 17 July that it contained benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine. His mandatory provisional suspension began on 4 August
Cocaine is classed as a stimulant and is prohibited in competition under WADA’s 2026 Prohibited List. Normally, a positive test for a non-specified stimulant can expose an athlete to a lengthy suspension.
But Kyrgios could be banned for just a month.
Kyrgios separately said that he intends to step away from public life for a convenient 28 days.
Has WADA suddenly become lackadaisical about cocaine?
No, this attitude is because anti-doping authorities have spent years trying to distinguish between athletes taking cocaine to compete and athletes taking cocaine recreationally.
In recent years, those circumstances have been treated very differently.
Cocaine, heroin, MDMA and THC are grouped by WADA as “Substances of Abuse”, covering drugs that are “frequently abused in society outside the context of sport”. If an athlete can establish that cocaine was taken out of competition and for reasons unrelated to sporting performance, the sanction is three months. If the athlete then satisfactorily completes a treatment programme approved by the relevant anti-doping authority, that falls to one month.
The test was in competition, but was the cocaine?
Two players can produce substantially the same laboratory result and face very different punishments.
Under the 2026 Tennis Anti-Doping Programme, a player does not commit a use violation by taking a substance outside competition if that substance is prohibited only in competition. But if the substance, a metabolite or another marker remains in the player’s body when an in-competition sample is collected, its presence can still constitute a separate anti-doping violation.
Cocaine therefore operates on two timelines.
The ITIA knows that benzoylecgonine was present in Kyrgios’s sample on 22 June. The laboratory finding does not establish exactly when he took cocaine or why. The distinction between presence and use is written in into the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme’s anti-doping violations.
Kyrgios must provehis cocaine use occurred out of competition and did not affect his performance.
The burden is his.
But if the cocaine was consumed during the in-competition period, that shortcut disappears. Under Article 10.2.4.2, a player who establishes that in-competition use was nevertheless unrelated to sporting performance can avoid having the conduct automatically classified as intentional, but does not receive the special reduced sanction.
Have players already received short one-month bans for cocaine?
Moroccan player Imran Sibille tested positive for cocaine following an in-competition sample collected at an ITF tournament in Catalonia on 9 March 2025. The ITIA later published its full decision.
Sibille admitted the violation but said he had taken cocaine approximately four to five days before the match, outside competition and in circumstances unrelated to his performance. His response included a detailed report from his psychologist.
The ITIA accepted his account and he completed the treatment programme, qualifying Sibille for a one-month ban.
It was even backdated to 8 May, when his provisional suspension began, and expired on 7 June. However, his results from the tournament were disqualified along with the associated ranking points and prize money.
So why is cocaine still prohibited at all?
Cocaine is a central nervous system stimulant.
A review published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine explains that CNS stimulants can reduce tiredness and increase alertness, competitiveness and aggression, although it also notes the lack of convincing evidence that cocaine produces a genuine performance benefit.
A 1997 review of drugs and athletic performance found that the limited studies of cocaine and exercise showed little to no performance gain, and that the euphoria generated by the drug could create an illusion of improved performance.
There are also fairly obvious disadvantages to attempting elite sport while taking a drug that places additional strain on the cardiovascular system. Research into cocaine and exercise has identified potentially serious cardiovascular effects, while another review concluded that acute and chronic cocaine abuse can negatively affect exercise performance.
How has tennis historically punished cocaine?
Cocaine has been testing tennis’s anti-doping rules for more than 30 years.
In 1995, Mats Wilander and Karel Nováček tested positive at the French Open. After challenging the case, both eventually withdrew their appeals in 1997 and received three-month suspensions, as well as having to pay back significant figures in prize money.
The creation of the World Anti-Doping Code produced a more standardised system and, for cocaine cases, occasionally a much harsher one.
Martina Hingis tested positive for a cocaine metabolite in a sample provided at Wimbledon on 29 June 2007. Hingis denied knowingly taking cocaine but the independent tribunal rejected her arguments.
Crucially, Hingis could not establish how the cocaine entered her body. The tribunal therefore rejected her claim of No Fault or No Significant Fault or Negligence.
She received a two-year suspension, backdated to 1 October 2007, and forfeited her Wimbledon and subsequent ranking points and prize money.
Richard Gasquet’s case, known as the “cocaine kiss” case, two years later showed that explaining the route of ingestion was essential. just how much could depend on explaining the route of ingestion.
Gasquet tested positive for a very small quantity of a cocaine metabolite in Miami. He argued that he had been contaminated by kissing a woman who had consumed cocaine during a night out.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ultimately accepted the contamination argument. The ITF and WADA had appealed seeking a two-year sanction, but CAS dismissed their appeals after finding that Gasquet had committed no fault or negligence.
Why did the rules change?
During consultation on the 2021 World Anti-Doping Code, WADA recorded repeated concerns about sanctions involving what it then called “street drugs”.
“Cocaine is a particular problem,” WADA wrote in its summary of the proposed changes to the Code.
WADA pointed to the number of cocaine findings recorded across sport, with many being found to be recreational use outside competition rather than attempts to gain a sporting advantage.
The question became whether somebody who used cocaine socially outside competition should face the same anti-doping consequences as somebody who deliberately used a prohibited stimulant.
A welfare argument was also made. In cases involving substance-use problems, treatment could well be a more appropriate response than a lengthy exclusion from sport. The existing system was also forcing anti-doping organisations to spend considerable resources determining sanctions in cases where the conduct did not necessarily affect the competitive level playing field.
The 2021 Code therefore created the Substance of Abuse category.
WADA designated cocaine, MDMA, heroin and THC because they were frequently abused outside sport, and introduced the three-month sanction with a possible reduction to one month through an approved treatment programme. by an anti-doping test from deliberate performance enhancement.
But the one-month sanction disappears next year
The 2027 World Anti-Doping Code will retain special treatment for qualifying Substance of Abuse cases but change the sanction.
During the review process, stakeholders raised three main complaints about the present system:
one month could be too short even for an anti-doping authority to evaluate and process a case.
Requiring completion of a treatment programme could be logistically difficult.
And mandatory rehabilitation could be excessive for a first violation where there was no evidence that treatment was actually needed. WADA set out those concerns in its summary of the proposed 2027 changes.
The new structure replaces the current one-month possibility for a first qualifying violation with a flat two-month suspension and no rehabilitation requirement. A subsequent violation involving the same Substance of Abuse carries four months, potentially reducible to two through a treatment programme.
The 2027 Code was scheduled for adoption by WADA’s Foundation Board in December 2025 and takes effect on 1 January 2027.