The Grass Is Always Greener – Time For The NFL To Let The Players Use Marijuana To Combat Pain During Seasonal Play

In July of this year, CNN reported that the DEA launched an investigation into claims that NFL players have been illegally provided with powerful prescription drugs, namely painkillers, in order to keep them active on the roster.  This wasn’t some street-corner-drug-dealing probe. Rather, the DEA believed players’ doctors and trainers were directly providing the narcotics.

The investigation arose out of a class-action lawsuit filed back in May of 2013 in U.S. Federal Court in Philadelphia where former NFL players decried a rampant culture of pain medication and injections that led to long-term health issues.  For example, Former San Francisco 49er and Pro Bowl center Jeremy Newberry said that he was instructed to take the painkiller Toradol (still the alleged current game-day drug of choice in the NFL) for several years, causing his kidneys to now only function at 30 percent.  The NFL ended up agreeing to pay $765 million to settle the claims of the roughly 20,000 players, some of whom have chosen to contest.

The other night, Tony Romo took a knee to the back (he recently had surgery to repair a herniated disk) and ended up with a contusion, came back into the game after receiving a pain-killing injection.  Robert Griffin III has received who-knows how many injections into that knee.  In spite of former litigation, the temporary-fix continues in plain sight.

Given the obvious danger of opioids and narcotic painkillers, it defies logic that NFL players are not allowed to self-medicate with the benefits of natural cannabinoids like marijuana or THC.  It has been legalized for medical purposes in 23 states and legalized to the general public over the age of 21 in two (including Washington and Colorado).  In Washington, it is regulated and taxed, but still considered a federally illicit drug – hence the NFL and Roger Goodell’s stance on leaving it off the banned list.  Though it’s worth noting that at this year’s Super Bowl (no pun intended), he’d maybe possibly just maybe consider changing that policy with (probably subjective) scientific evidence.

I already know the argument to be made against this: It’s still an illegal substance under federal law, and these are our children’s role models!  Well, as for the latter, if teaching kids that it’s okay to play football hopped up on pain pills and risk permanent injury, then I want no part of that moral debate.  I believe, however, that the NFL should adopt a more relaxed approach to the testing of marijuana in NFL players comparable to that of Major League Baseball.

In the MLB, players are not tested for marijuana (classified as a “Drug of Abuse”) within its Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program unless there is reasonable cause to believe that a player has, in the past 12 months, engaged in the use, possession, sale or distribution of the substance.  Let’s be honest, players aren’t going to blow whistles on their teammates for smoking pot like we saw with the performance enhancing drug scandal.

At the beginning of the season, the NFL updated its policy on the permitted threshold from 15 nanograms of carboxy THC per milliliter of urine to 35 nanograms; however, there are so many variables that can determine the potency in the urine stream that it might not actually reflect the amount consumed (much like the problems law enforcement faced in Washington and Colorado regarding driving while impaired infractions where marijuana was legalized by voters).  Despite this increase, take the acceptable threshold for airline pilots (50 nanograms/milliliter) or the Olympics (150 nanograms/milliliter).  Each human has a different reaction to different strains of the plant depending on the type of exposure and the manner in which it is used (whether it be through second-hand, ingested, smoked through a pipe or smoked through a joint, for example).  So, despite of efforts to make this more “relaxed,” they just brought to light the impossibility of bright line standards in testing for marijuana.  The best thing the NFL can do is reform its policy entirely, which is to not test for the presence of cannabinoids at all.

With the accessibility of new technologies for marijuana ingestion like vaporizers, there’s no reason to believe that using naturally based products to combat pain in the NFL are any less safe than prescription narcotics produced by pharmaceutical corporations with all the lobbying power in the world.  According to the U.S. Government’s website on drug abuse, over 2 million people in the country suffer from substance use disorders related to prescription opioid pain relievers.  In the past fifteen years, overdose deaths have more than quadrupled as a result of overdoses involving these drugs.  Furthermore, deaths from opioid pain relievers exceed those from all illegal drugs combined.

It’s time for the NFL to embrace the already-known medical benefits of marijuana.  Not doing so reflects the backwards logic that has so long kept the plant an illegal substance in this country.  Meanwhile team doctors and trainers continue to pull syringes and pills out of their pockets with legal prescription drugs that will irreparably harm these players already subjecting themselves to unprecedented physical danger.