Marijuana use by NFL players soon may make “taking a hit for the team” take on new meaning in NFL locker rooms. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell implied that medical marijuana might one day be legal for injured players. Marijuana is currently a banned substance in the NFL.
“I don’t know what’s going to develop as far as the next opportunity for medicine to evolve and to help either deal with pain or help deal with injuries, but we will continue to support the evolution of medicine,” said Goodell to ESPN
Many advocates of medical marijuana are applauding the dialogue taking place. Twenty states allow some form of marijuana use, either medical or recreational, and there are at least eight NFL clubs in those 20 states. Football is a violent sport and its players are prone to suffer frequent injury, which can lead to chronic pain. The only way for many players to deal with this pain legally is through prescription pain killers. NFL players take narcotics like Oxycontin and can wind up with an addiction to opiates. It has been proven through vast amounts of research, including a CNN special with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, that marijuana has definitive medical uses and that its negative effects have been greatly exaggerated.
“We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States,” stated Gupta in his special.
But many critics feel that the potential for misuse combined with other negative behavior patterns among NFL athletes, is not worth the risk. Take, for example, the latest controversy with wide receiver Davone Bess of the Cleveland Browns. A picture was tweeted from his Twitter handle that shows what appears to be a bag of marijuana and a ‘blunt,” along with a bottle of 5-Hour Energy drink and a drinking glass. Bess’ caption reads “We the real Dons.”
Behavior such as this brings negative publicity to the NFL, further complicating the matter. The commissioner’s statement is no way an endorsement of marijuana, but it does indicate that the NFL is looking at the mood of the country on this issue.
