The 11 times world champion believes it was "silly" that a snowboarder was stripped of his Winter Olympics gold medal for testing positive to marijuana.

"I was like, you think that helped him or hurt him? I would have thought it slowed him down," Slater said.

"It was kind of ridiculous. The guy wins and they take it away because he was smoking pot and that was cheating. I don't know. That seemed silly to me.

"But there are standards we are expected to rise to. So the drug testing, it's totally viable for us to have it."

Surfers will be subjected to in-competition testing but a positive result will only be made public if the substance is performance-enhancing, or if it is a third positive test to a recreational drug.

Slater, who recently turned 40, was typically coy on whether he would compete for a full year on tour, but reiterated how important a good result at the Quiksilver Pro was for getting on a role for the rest of the year particularly against a highly talented bunch of rookies.

“The question (on retiring) comes up each year and each year I don’t know,” Slater said. “Part of me wants to do other stuff, but sometimes the tour is fun. I’m just not too stressed about it.

“There always be younger guys setting a new direction and there’ll always be change and advancement. Which I think is great. But no-one would deny how good the new group coming through is.”

Two-time event champion Burrow (Aus) is excited to see the level of skill the young guys are going to bring to the Quiksilver Pro this year.

“It just keeps getting better and better,” Burrow said. “The depth of the field is incredible and it keeps us on our toes to keep up with the progression and for us to try and feed off that hunger.”