In a Twitter post liked by women's heavyweight champion Claressa Shields, Victor Conte seemed to suggest that Shields had tested positive for marijuana after her last fight, but that she was innocent of any wrongdoing. Conte, an expert in athlete doping issues due to his past illegal activities, currently operates Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning (SNAC) and works with Shields. He tweeted as follows: "Important notice to boxing: Claressa Shields did not test positive for a PED [performance enhancing drug] after her recent fight in Michigan [a win over Danielle Perkins on February 2nd in Flint, Michigan]. Claressa had not smoked marijuana, [but] the Commision did a mouth swab test after the fight. There seems to be a number of issues that exist with the Michigan testing procedure. Urine is the normal sample [method] used to test for marijuana. Most credible anti-doping entities do not consider marijuana to be a PED. VADA found no PEDs in Claressa's blood and urine samples. The Nevada commision, the UFC and other commissions do not consider marijuana a PED. The amount found in her mouth swab was 3.4 ng/ml or parts per billion. This is an ultra-trace amount that likely would have come from second-hand smoke in the arena. There were also other irregularities that occurred in the testing procedure. The world of boxing needs to clearly understand that Claressa is a clean boxer and always has been. More information about this rather unusual case will become available soon."

In approving Conte's statement, Shields lashed out at people who were calling her a cheater: "Mice try haters. Dont't ever try and put no bullsh*t on me. Clean athletes win!" In responding to a Twitter commenter, Shields added that she had never even tried marjuana.