Roger Goodell isn’t going to let NFL players use marijuana in a recreation manner anytime soon.
For medical reasons, maybe.
Thus is the biggest takeaway from Goodell’s Friday morning interview on Mike & Mike, where he seemed to change his stance slightly about how the drug is used for medical purposes.
In short, he’s open to it being used in a medical way, should those advising the league suggest it, per Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk:
But we’ve been studying that through our advisers. To date, they haven’t said this is a change we think you should make that’s in the best interests of the health and safety of our players. If they do, we’re certainly going to consider that. But to date, they haven’t really said that.
In Goodell’s personal view, though, it won’t ever be something used outside of medical reasons:
Listen, you’re ingesting smoke, so that’s not usually a very positive thing that people would say. It does have addictive nature. There are a lot of compounds in marijuana that may not be healthy for the players long-term. All of those things have to be considered. And it’s not as simple as someone just wants to feel better after a game. We really want to help our players in that circumstance but I want to make sure that the negative consequences aren’t something that is something that we’ll be held accountable for some years down the road.
It’s a telling, if not encouraging interview from Goodell—his at least willingness to listen to the medical side of the argument is a step in the right direction.
Granted, this doesn’t mean medical usage is coming anytime soon while states continue to legalize recreational usage. But any progress at this point is progress, so how the league’s stance continues to shift on the matter is something to monitor.
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