JOINT EFFORT
Former NFL players kick off campaign for use of weed in battle against head injuries
VINTON, O’KEEFFE & FOOTE
After a hot and sticky afternoon teaching Paramus Catholic High School football players how to punish quarterbacks, Leonard Marshall sent the kids to the showers and then went to his car to retrieve the medicine he takes to relieve the chronic pain he inherited from his 11 seasons in the NFL.
The former Pro Bowl defensive end, an anchor of the Giants teams that won two Super Bowls under coach Bill Parcells, sat on a bench in the middle of the school’s sprawling New Jersey campus and took several hits from a handheld vaporizer containing a cartridge of amber-colored liquid. The substance was cannabidiol (CBD), a compound found exclusively in the marijuana plant that, unlike the better-known THC, doesn’t get users high.
Marshall, diagnosed in 2013 with signs of the brain-eating disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), begins his days with a 500-milligram dose of CBD he takes with a dropper. The 54-yearold former football star — now an entrepreneur and Paramus Catholic’s defensive line coach — uses the vaporizer throughout the day to stave off crippling headaches and other ailments tied to traumatic brain injuries. It is a safe and effective alternative to the dangerously addictive painkillers passed around in NFL locker rooms like Skittles, he says.
“The headaches, the migraine headaches, is what CBD has really affected big time,” Marshall says. “I won’t say the relief was immediate, but I would say from minutes to hours from usage, I could tell the difference.”
As the Giants, Jets and the rest of the league prepare for the 2016 season, commissioner Roger Goodell faces increasing demands to embrace cannabis as a solution to two crises that threaten to derail the $13 billion-a-year league: painkiller abuse and concussions. Marshall is part of a budding movement led primarily by former football players who want the NFL to remove marijuana from its banned substance list and provide funding for pot’s potential as an alternative to dangerously addictive pain medications and as a treatment for the brain injuries that have driven football stars such as Junior Seau and Dave Duerson to suicide.
“What I’m asking for is research,” says Tennessee Titans linebacker Derrick Morgan, the only active NFL player publicly advocating for cannabis. “We play a violent game. The injury rate is 100%. The more options we have for our health the better.”
The NFL’s marijuana movement has been loosely coordinated by CW Hemp, a Colorado company that manufactures a CBD supplement called Charlotte’s Web that has been successful in treating
seizures in children, and its nonprofit partner, Realm of Caring, a CBD advocacy organization that provides support to the families of kids with epilepsy and other neurological disorders.
Scientists are cautious when they speak about cannabis’ potential as medicine, but CBD has been effective in reducing seizures in children who suffer from epilepsy. Researchers also say cannabis has shown tremendous promise as a treatment for pain, inflammation, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and other ailments.
“There’s just not a lot that’s proven yet,” says Dr. Douglas Smith, a professor of brain surgery and the director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania.
The most ardent supporters of CBD suggest it can also help protect athletes from concussions and prevent CTE, the NFL industrial disease caused by repeated blows to the head. They point to the curious fact that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services holds a patent that suggests compounds in cannabis may limit damage from traumatic brain injuries.
“The NFL has spent $100 million on concussion research,” says Realm of Caring executive director Heather Jackson, “but not one buck on a known and patented neuro-protectant.”
The NFL and the Players Association did not respond to requests for interviews, but league officials recently contacted the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins researchers involved in Realm of Caring-funded studies on cannabis’ effects on pain, brain injuries and quality of life in current and former players. “At the moment, it’s about fact-finding on their part,” says Marcel Bonn-Miller of the Penn School of Medicine. “They want to learn more about where the science is.”
Football sources say the union, which would have to approve any changes to the NFL’s collectively bargained drug policy, has also expressed interest in marijuana’s potential. In 2014, the policy was changed to raise the amount of marijuana metabolite necessary to trigger a positive drug test.
But despite the inquiries from league officials it is highly unlikely that the NFL and its union will rush to embrace marijuana as the answer to its health and safety woes. Pot is still classified as a Schedule I drug, which means the federal government says it has no accepted medical uses, and the NFL has long been governed by men who prefer not to alienate fans and sponsors — companies that include beer and pharmaceutical companies — by taking controversial positions on social issues.
“Goodell’s most recent statements have indicated that he doesn’t see an immediate need to change the policy,” says Eugene Monroe, the 33-year-old former Ravens lineman who cited CTE fears when he announced his retirement July 21. “The mounting research in the field and pressure from players should encourage him to re-evaluate.”
Medical marijuana, however, is now legal in dozens of states, including New York, and recreational use is legal in four states and the District of Columbia. Eight more states, meanwhile, will vote on marijuana initiatives in November. The stigma surrounding marijuana is disappearing as fast as opposition to gay marriage a few years ago.
So, too, are the headaches that sidelined Leonard Marshall before he began using CBD about six months ago.
“My quality of life,” Marshall says after taking a hit off his vaporizer, “has improved because of this.”
Otis Reed, a 5-year-old boy with a sly smile, bright eyes and chubby cheeks that demand to be kissed, was diagnosed with a rare form of epilepsy when he was just 9 weeks old. His parents tried everything to improve his quality of life: special diets, steroids, surgeries and pharmaceutical drugs that increased his blood pressure, enlarged his heart, weakened his bones and made it difficult to sleep through the night. Even the stimulator doctors implanted in Otis’ brain did not stop the scores of seizures the boy suffered every day.
“We tried everything,” Otis’ father Ryan Reed says. “Nothing helped.”
Otis’ last option was a complicated operation that would basically disconnect half of his brain and had just a 30% chance of success. The Reeds instead decided to try CBD, which required them to leave their friends, families and careers in Lawrence, Kan. — where they feared they would be prosecuted for drug crimes or child abuse for giving Otis the cannabis oil — and move to Colorado, which has been on the cutting edge of marijuana science for much of the past decade.
Otis suffers from far fewer seizures now thanks to the low-THC, high-CBD oil he uses every day. He now sleeps through the night and will attend kindergarten in the fall.
“He is getting stronger,” says Reed, cradling Otis as he sits on the floor at Realm of Caring’s Colorado Springs office, where his wife Kathy works as an executive administrator. “His quality of life is so much better.”
Realm of Caring was founded in 2013 by two Colorado moms: Paige Figi, whose daughter Charlotte — featured in CNN’s groundbreaking documentary “Weed” — suffered from hundreds of seizures each week but now lives a normal life thanks to Charlotte’s Web, the CBD extract named in her honor; and Heather Jackson, whose 13-yearold son Zaki has also found relief from seizures after using CBD. They were joined by CW Hemp chief executive officer Joel Stanley and his six brothers, whose family business blends capitalism and good works.
“We are a socially conscious company,” says Vijay Bachus, the director of operations at CW Hemp’s production facility in east Boulder.