 Right now, the National Football League, NFL, has a pro-painkiller drugs, anti-cannabis stance when it comes to handling the drugs players can use to help them cope with their pain. This view can be derived from the NFL suspending players such as Seantrel Henderson in 2015, who “was suspended 10 games by the NFL for smoking marijuana to help treat his Chron’s Disease” (Davis). The NFL also will not allow its players to take CBD Oil either, which has been proven to help with a myriad of painkiller issues. Take the Hempel family for example, who has an 11 year old girl that suffers from pain and seizures. Hempel’s daughter was permitted to take CBD to help cope with these seizures and pain. The results were amazing. It helped her control her nerve activity, such as her memory and pain, and immune system (Hempel). This relates to current NFL players as well as former NFL players. If an eleven-year-old can use cannabinoid oil and suffer reduced pain, then, why shouldn’t the NFL allow it as well for grown men who know the risks of the drug? The NFL strictly prohibits marijuana and suspends players who use it, even men like Henderson who truly need to utilize it. In Henderson’s case, he cannot even take painkillers because of his disease. The NFL has put marijuana on the blacklist. However, the NFL handles painkillers much differently. Just as recently as March 9 2017, the Washington Post was permitted to look at the sealed court material involved in a federal lawsuit against the NFL which was filed by former players which alleged that “every doctor deposed so far has testified that they violated one or more federal drug laws and regulations” (Maese). The NFL has a painkiller problem. They do not provide nearly enough oversight over the powerful painkillers they prescribe and mismanage them. Their fallback to helping players deal with pain is a steady stream of powerful painkiller drugs, which, per former All-Pro Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson, are “handed out like candy to players” (Bieler). Also, to give credibility to that statement from Mr. Johnson, it was found in the sealed court material that the New York Jets in 2009 “gave out 1,178 doses of Toradol and 1,564 doses of Vicodin” (Maese). That would average out on a 53 man NFL roster to 21 doses of Toradol and 28 doses of Vicodin per player. One of which, Toradol, is so powerful that “many countries only administer it in hospitals after surgery” (Maese). Also, it can be concluded that the dosage amounts wouldn’t be even across the roster. That is a problem. The NFL is handing out painkillers so strong that some countries only reserve them for surgical procedures. What is the solution to curbing this problem? Allowing cannabis products such as marijuana and cannabinoid oil to be used as pain relief medicine by NFL players to help them cope with their rigorous, often injury-filled season. Painkillers are a good thing for players that help relieve pain; however, doctors often overprescribe them to the players which can lead to painkiller addictions. Marijuana is also addictive in a sense, but it is an alternative that has far less addictive potential than the painkillers players are currently being prescribed. Hemp oil is much different than marijuana in the sense it lacks THC, the addictive component of marijuana that causes ‘highs’, but it has all the benefits that marijuana comes with such as relief of pain and reducing inflammation. 

As one of the most popular sports in the United States with a large following, it is only right that the massive fan base should care about the well-being of the players that provide them with entertainment every Sunday, Monday, and Thursday during the league season. The NFL, while a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, is built upon the backs of these players who go out onto the field on Sundays after beating each other up during the weekdays in practice and proceed to try to hit each other as hard as possible and run as fast as possible to score. There will clearly be a lot of pain in a sport where twenty-four men wearing lots of padding, twelve on offense and twelve on defense, who weigh hundreds of pounds are on the field at a time trying to destroy their opponent and put them into the dirt. According to Reference, “the average height of an NFL player is 6’4 and the average player was 250 lbs+.” (Reference). It is a brutal sport. Players are constantly getting injured, and the average length of a NFL career is “about three years and three months per the NFL Players Association but the NFL claims the average career length is six years” (Statista). That is a below average job length when compared to the country wide average. Unlike any other average job too, you could suffer a major injury and go from being a star on Sundays to an average Joe working a nine to five shift at a business in no time. If an injury is serious enough say goodbye to the days as a NFL player. The NFL tries its best to help its players deal with their pain. 

The teams give the players lots of painkiller drugs such as Vicodin and Toradol to help keep them on their feet and able to function properly for those sixteen, or more depending if you make the playoffs, Sundays per year. However, the NFL still does not allow one obvious pain reliever that already is legalized in several states and used by lots of people nationwide for medical purposes: cannabis. The NFL has strict penalties against cannabis usage, that ramp up over time after each new offense starting after an initial four game suspension. The NFL currently classifies It not only hurts the players but it also hurts the NFL, who has had stars such as Cleveland Brown’s All-Pro wide receiver Josh Gordon, who had one of the greatest seasons for a wide receiver ever, and Washington Redskins perennial All-Pro left tackle Trent Williams. Having stars suspended not only hurts the players and their paychecks, it also hurts the league and the product on the field. With star players suspended the quality of play on the field gets worse. Why then does the NFL have such harsh punishments against the drug, and do players still use it despite these risks that come with the drug and being caught with it? The NFL needs to legalize it not only because of the massive amount of benefits, but also because most of the player base already uses the drug.

Even with cannabis products being under the NFL’s banned substance program currently, lots of players still use the drug and don’t get caught. The NFL only tests players once per year around training camp, so per one anonymous player who is also a union official, “you know when the test is, once you pass it you can do as much as you want all year” (Freeman). What are the exact numbers of players though who use cannabis products currently in the NFL? Well, those numbers can never be known until the league allows cannabis products to be used. Players who are currently in the sport won’t simply come out and admit that they use any cannabis product for fear of suspensions and frequent testing. Some will anonymously talk about the drug however. Mike Freeman, a well-known NFL writer, managed to get sixteen current players to anonymously sit down and discuss cannabis, smoking marijuana specifically. Freeman then proceeded to ask the 15 current NFL players about the drug. Per Mike Freeman, “fifteen of the sixteen current players smoke marijuana, while one does not” (Freeman). Then Freeman proceeded to poll them on the percentage of marijuana users who smoke it regularly, two to three times per week, and he found that “ten said fifty percent use regularly, three said ten percent (including the non-smoker), two said seventy percent, and one refused to quantify but said a shitload” (Freeman). The research shows most of the league smokes marijuana anyways regardless of the rules. This lines up with former NFL running back Jamaal Anderson’s statements. Jamaal Anderson says that, “when I played, forty to fifty percent of the league used it, marijuana, and that its at least sixty percent now. Bare minimum.” (Freeman).  Per all the players interviewed by Freeman it appears that the cannabis product usage is extremely high amongst NFL players. Most NFL players appear to smoke marijuana to help them cope with pain, but does marijuana smoking or hemp oil benefit players at all? No current players will speak on it, but plenty of former players have and have talked about it in positive terms.

There are testimonials from well-known former NFL players such as Jake Plummer and Eugene Monroe that advocate for the NFL allowing the drug to be used. Jake Plummer, a former NFL QB for the Denver Broncos, is a big advocate for cannabinoid oil, CBD. Plummer says that, “when I use CBD, a non-toxic, non-addictive, naturally occurring compound in cannabis, I feel virtually pain free. Random headaches? Gone. Inflammation and joint stiffening? Gone.” (Plummer). Plummer is a big advocate for CBD simply because of the positive effects it has had on reducing his pain after he retired early from injuries. The other, Eugene Monroe, an offensive tackle for the Ravens, was the first player in the league to publicly announce his support for cannabis products while still playing. Monroe at first was anti-marijuana, however “he made up his mind to publicly support marijuana after arriving at a conviction steeled by obsessive research” (Kilgore). He has even donated eighty thousand dollars to researchers at Pennsylvania and John Hopkins to further study marijuana use in professional football players. Monroe says that, “speaking about cannabis can honestly ruins someone’s career” and that, “we know it’s not toxic, we know it’s safer than what we’re already doing” (Kilgore). Cannabis clearly is beneficial to players based on former player statements on the matter, but the NFL does not allow the drug not only because of their personal concerns about it, but also because it is banned nation-wide. 

The NFL much like the government currently bans the drug nation -wide because of concerns about it even though players still use it. Well, while the players are in favor of it and, current and former NFL players included, use it, the NFL and the U.S. Government beg to differ for a handful of reasons. The reasons are that marijuana has some drawbacks such as brain damage if you smoke before a certain age potentially and the hallucinogens that are in the drug. However, it is still allowed in lots of states in the country and hemp oil is allowed in every state in the country. Currently the United States government has cannabis listed as an illegal drug in most states; however, twenty-eight states allow medical marijuana and sixteen allow cannabinoid oil. A decent amount of the states that allow both cannabinoid oil and marijuana are homes to NFL teams. There are some valid concerns about the drug. In a report commissioned in 1999 by the United States Office of National Drug Control Policy which was done by Drs. Stanley J. Watson and Janet E. Joy as well as medical degree holder John Benson Jr. outlines some of these issues. Some of the adverse effects of cannabis are “anxiety reduction, sedation, and euphoria can be potentially undesirable for some patients” (Watson). However, this report worries more about the long-term effects of the drug. It should not though because almost half the country has it legalized now and the United States already allows far more harmful drugs that impact you worse long term like alcohol and cigarettes. Hemp oil unlike marijuana is allowed throughout the country, the main issue with marijuana smoking is the THC in it.  Some of the long-term concerns of marijuana smoking involve “like tobacco smoke, an increased risk of cancer, lung damage, poor pregnancy outcomes, and the effects of THC, the mind altering chemical the drug” (Watson). The short-term concerns are not as big of an issue per the report though for “the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range of efforts tolerated for other medications” (Watson). That for sure is positive because some of the adverse effects for some patients seem like positives for NFL players, especially sedation and euphoria to help them cope with pain. The best course of action would be for the NFL to allow marijuana smoking any time after or a certain time frame before the game to avoid players from experiencing the euphoric and hallucinatory effects of the drug while playing, and the NFL should allow hemp oil usage in game because it is a great pain reliever and it lacks THC.   The NFL currently allows cigarette usage, and the adverse long-term effects of marijuana smoke go hand in hand with the effects of long term cigarette smoking, but unlike cigarettes, marijuana is banned. One thing marijuana has that cigarettes lack is THC, the main mind altering ingredient in marijuana. Cannabinoid oil however, lacks this ingredient. So, it could therefore be a great substitute for NFL players to take to help cope with their pain and other medical issues. A second medical study on cannabis, which is done by Dr. Itai Danovitch references that, “some long-term studies show that brain function recovers over time, while others demonstrate persistence of subtle, but important, impairments” (Danovitch). NFL players already suffer long-term from concussions, and per Calvin Johnson, “concussions happen. If not on every play, then they happen like every other, third play, you know. It’s simple to get a concussion, I’ve had my fair share” (Bieler). Players already deal with the awful long term effects of concussions on the brain, why not give them a coping mechanism that is not as addictive as Toradol or all the other painkiller drugs the NFL team doctors prescribe? Another third study, which was performed by Dr. Kevin P. Hill in 2015, says that, “use of marijuana for chronic pain and neurotic pain is supported by high-quality evidence” (Hill). Hill’s conclusion is one that sees medical marijuana that helps cope with pain. Hill goes on to say that “medical marijuana is used to treat a host of indications, a few of which have evidence to support treatment with marijuana and many that do not. Physicians should educate patients on medical marijuana to ensure it is used appropriately and that patients benefit from its use” (Hill). A key thing to note about that statement is that patients should be educated by their physicians about the drug. Currently, even with large amounts of players smoking marijuana and using CBD, it is still banned. This therefore, does not allow players to have that key doctor oversite on their cannabis product consumption. That is an issue. Another issue is that players are not able to legally acquire medical marijuana and CBD oil, which could lead to them getting bad strains that could potentially kill them, especially if the strain is laced with another more powerful drug like cocaine. How can the league avoid this problem? Simply by allowing its players to use cannabis products to help them cope with pain and wean out the extremely powerful painkillers like Toradol and Vicodin, which are known to be very addictive.

In conclusion, the NFL is one of the highest grossing and most powerful sports leagues in the world, and players are being denied a very useful drug that could help them cope with major problems. The NFL already hands out painkillers, and these drugs do their jobs well and help the players cope with their injuries and keep them on the field. Adding cannabis products such as medical marijuana and cannabinoid oil to this mix would be a brilliant idea by the league, and the best way to do this and comply with government laws is to only allow cannabis in legalized states. Hemp oil is already allowed across the country so there is no problem with that going against government rules. Hemp oil and marijuana are already used by many players to help them cope with their pain in the NFL, if the sixteen anonymous players in Mike Freeman’s piece and former players such as Jamaal Anderson are to be believed. Why not legalize cannabis products for all to use in the NFL? It would give the players that abide by NFL policy a chance to have access to a new pain reliever that is already available to millions of people across the United States as well as players who don’t care about the rules and want to care for their bodies. While there are downsides to cannabis products, such as potential lung damage and the potential for slight brain impairment in some parts of the brain, per studies done by Drs. such as Stanley J. Watson and Itai Danovitch, NFL players already have access to other drugs like cigarettes that damage their lungs as well as suffer from concussions that lead to long term problems brain wise. Why not let players have that choice between cannabis products that are legalized in almost half the country and pain killers such as Vicodin and Toradol that are used throughout the NFL? Former players such as Jake Plummer can attest to the relief cannabis products provide. Plummer has gone through the NFL experience and even had his promising career as a quarterback decimated by injuries, and he turns to cannabis products for that pain relief and inflammation reduction. The NFL would be making a player-friendly choice in legalizing marijuana, and the legalization of the drug would not only benefit the NFL, less star players suspended, but the players themselves, who would be given a different alternative to all the painkillers, which while do their job well do not have some of the positive effects of marijuana, they must take on a regular basis.
