NFLers regularly use pot: Bennett
Former player estimates 89%
Recently retired NFL player Martellus Bennett has a rough estimate of how many of his former compatriots smoke marijuana. It’s pretty high.
“I want to say about 89 per cent,” Bennett told Chris Simms and Adam Lefkoe on their Bleacher Report podcast this week.
Bennett, who played 10 seasons for five teams, said players are turning to marijuana as an alternative to prescription painkillers.
“There’s medical marijuana,” Bennett said. “So it’s like, there’s times of the year where your body just hurts so bad, that you don’t want to just be popping pills all the time ... It ruins your liver. There’s a lot of these antiinflammatories that you take for so long that like, it starts to eat at your liver or kidneys and things like that. And a human made that. God made weed.”
In July, the NFL reached out to the players’ union about possibly joining forces to study the use of marijuana to combat chronic pain. The union, according to reporter Peter King, in turn asked the NFL for comprehensive data on how teams are distributing prescription painkillers to players, and things stalemated from there.
Last year, sealed court documents reviewed by The Post from a federal lawsuit filed by 1,800 former NFL players revealed teams violated federal laws governing prescription drugs, disregarded guidance from the Drug Enforcement Administration on how to store, track, transport and distribute controlled substances, and plied their players with powerful painkillers and anti-inflammatories.
Union chief DeMaurice Smith also has told The Post the players would like the league to take a “less punitive” approach to recreational marijuana use by players. The drug is banned by the NFL, with escalating punishments for each positive test, though marijuana use is treated more leniently than the use of other drugs.
Considering how easy it is for players to get around the league’s recreational drug-testing policy, Bennett might be lowballing his estimate. Players without a positive test on their record are tested once per year, with league rules mandating it take place between April and August, usually after they report to camp.
“One former medical personnel called it an ‘intelligence test, because it’s once a year, and you know it’s coming,’ ” Ben Volin of the Boston Globe wrote in April 2015.