ASA and Leafly Tag-Team NFL

In my ongoing quest to bring two of my favorite things into alignment, cannabis and football, I have often written about the sheer idiocy of the NFL’s stance on cannabis, especially given the recent Ray Rice incident that illustrates just how backwards that stance truly is.

Players are getting suspended for multiple games, sometimes even whole seasons, for using cannabis, yet they are free to nearly kill their spouse and garner little more than a wrist slap.

I digress, this piece is not really about the wide canyon in the NFL between the transgression and the punishment, or the apparent lack of concern for the safety of women. The main, practical reason that I feel cannabis should be legal and allowed for consumption by NFL players is that it is a tremendously safe alternative to the gamut of pharmaceutical pain medication that these men are readily prescribed.

To that end, our friends over at Americans for Safe Access have recently teamed up with Leafly in an advertising campaign aimed squarely at this topic. As ASA tells it:

“The national conversation about medical cannabis is heating up right now, and the National Football League (NFL) and sports fans are a part of it. In January, HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” reported that an estimated 50-60 percent of NFL players regularly use marijuana, many for pain management. Using medical cannabis to lower doses or substitute for opiate painkillers can help reduce the misuse that leaves former players addicted at four-times the rate of non-players. This new major media ad campaign is designed to bring the conversation about medical cannabis to the mainstream and educate both the NFL and its fan base on the medical benefits of cannabis, accelerating some must-needed change not just among the organization, but across the country as well. This is the kind of proactive and effective media work ASA can do – when we have your support.
These ads, the first of which appeared Sunday in USA Today’s NFL Special Edition, will run for 30 days and have a presence in markets for the Atlanta Falcons, Chicago Bears, Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Green Bay Packers, Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, New York Giants, and Philadelphia Eagles.”

The tagline on the ad is “medical marijuana works on pain even when opiates don’t.” Amen to that. Yes, these men are well payed to play a game, but it’s a damn hard game and they put themselves through grueling punishment for our entertainment. No, they aren’t victims and they don’t deserve our pity, but I don’t think anyone should have to choose between being in intractable pain or taking a pill that is systematically destroying their insides.

At least bring cannabis into the conversation, maybe even as the first stop on the treatment train. When you have a headache, your first stop should be a glass of water and maybe an aspirin. You don’t just present a headache and go in for an epidural. With cannabis, the worst case scenario (outside some highly unlikely allergy or something like that) is that it is not effective. Your body undergoes a pretty serious chemical purifying process when you take a pain pill. Sure, it may temporarily help with immediate pain, but prolonged use could be shredding your liver, kidneys, or pancreas.

The thing is, I would wager that most players just want to keep playing. They don’t likely spend too much time thinking about how what they are doing on the field will affect them after football. These guys just want to play and they trust their team doctors with their very futures. Shouldn’t they at least be given the chance to medicate with cannabis? Anecdotal reports from players (past and present) have it that cannabis is not only safer than opiates, but often more effective at lessening their pain.

The NFL has yet to come into this century on two major issues: women and weed. The tide is slowly turning in favor of weed and hopefully we can stage a similar movement for women as well. I would rather the NFL act right about women before they open their eyes on cannabis, but it seems that this cookie is crumbling as it will and without my approval.