Medical Marijuana not coming to the NFL soon

Even with states across the country changing their laws and countless research coming out about the benefits of medical marijuana, don’t expect it to be available to NFL players anytime soon.

It is a well-known fact that the league allows the use of heavily-addictive painkillers like Hydrocodone, Vicodin, Percocet, Toradol, Celebrex, etc., but yet when it comes to using a device that is legal in 20 states that have NFL franchises, the league doesn’t seem to be budging.

“Yes I agree there have been changes,” Goodell said today at his annual Super Bowl press conference when asked about the subject. “But not significant enough changes that our medical personal have changed their view.”

A 2011 study by researchers at Washington University in St Louis found that former NFL players were four times more likely to abuse prescription painkillers than the general population and more than seven in 10 players who used pain medications during their playing days went on to abuse them either during their playing days or after their careers ended.

“I feel like I can speak about this because I’ve tried everything,” former tight end Nate Jackson told The Guardian earlier this year. “I’ve shot up HGH [human growth hormone], done the injections, tried the pills, tried marijuana. It’s not that I’m this big marijuana guy, it just helped my body the most.”

“It kept my brain clean,” Jackson said earlier this year during the Cannabis Business Executives Breakfast, which kicked off a three-day conference titled “Sports, Meds and Money”.

“I feel like I exited the game with my mind intact,” he added. “And I credit that to marijuana in a lot of ways and not getting hooked on these pain pills that are recklessly distributed in the league when a guy gets an injury.”

Yet, marijuana remains on the leagues banned substance list, despite the positives it could bring to the monsters that are the grown men who smash into each other at full speed every Sunday.

This issue isn’t about allowing the players to get high.

It’s about giving them an opportunity to use a less harmful substance that is currently provided to them to help them cope with the negative effects of playing the game of football.

Despite their being growing evidence to the contrary, Goodell isn’t having any of it.

“Until [the medical professionals] do, I don’t expect us to change our view.”