As more and more states are legalizing medical and recreational marijuana, more of the NFL’s players are speaking up about cannabis for recovery and pain versus traditional opiate based medicine.
As more and more states are legalizing medical and recreational marijuana, more of the NFL’s players are speaking up about cannabis for recovery and pain versus traditional opiate based medicine. If a team gets granted to come to Vegas, you bet you will have players getting their medical cards in the off season, before testing for banned substances kicks in. Do you think that the NFL should change their policy on marijuana?
Tennessee Titans linebacker Derrick Morgan would like to change that; he would at least like the NFL to look into the health benefits of marijuana in a profession where injuries and ongoing pain is normal.
Morgan is not the first NFL player to speak publicly on the matter. Former Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman Eugene Monroe has also been an outspoken advocate for marijuana research. In announcing his retirement from football in July, he said in a statement:
“The last 18 years have been full of traumatic injuries to both my head and my body. I’m not complaining, just stating a fact. Has the damage to my brain already been done? Do I have CTE? I hope I don’t, but over 90% of the brains of former NFL players that have been examined showed signs of the disease. I am terrified.”
I actually was watching the CNN documentary on weed and I’d seen this little girl named Charlotte, she had epilepsy, hundreds of seizures a week. And they started giving her this cannabis oil and it was a significant reduction in her seizures almost overnight.
So I started looking into it, starting researching and educating myself, reached out to Eugene Monroe [former offensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens] because I’ve seen him publicly advocating for it. [I] reached out to him and he just started extending his pool of resources and just kind of share[d] with me his story and his journey on it. And the more and more I researched it, the more and more I got comfortable about talking about it.
I really haven’t had too much conversation with the NFL. I think where it starts is the delegation of resources to researching it. I’m not going sit here and say, “Hey, look, we need to take this off the banned substance list and let guys use it freely.”
What I’m asking for is just a thorough look into it — research into it. There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence out there of people benefiting from it. But I think we need some clinical research into it in order to make some progress.
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