NFL COMES UNDER FIRE
Lawsuit claims drug abuse
WASHINGTON NFL 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 antiinflammatories each season, according to sealed court documents contained in a federal lawsuit filed by former players.
The sealed material provides a rare look into the league’s relationship with drugs and how team doctors manage the pain inherent in a bruising sport to keep players on the field.
Federal law lays out strict guidelines for how teams can handle and dispense prescription drugs. The sealed court filing, which includes testimony and documents by team and league medical personnel, describes multiple instances in which team and league officials were made aware of abuses, record-keeping problems and even violations of federal law and were either slow in responding or failed to comply.
The filing, prepared by lawyers for the players suing the league, asserts that “every doctor deposed so far ... has testified that they violated one or more” federal drug laws and regulations “while serving in their capacity as a team doctor.”
Anthony Yates, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ team doctor and past president of the NFL Physicians Society, testified in a deposition that “a majority of clubs as of 2010 had trainers controlling and handling prescription medications and controlled substances when they should not have,” the filing states.
At times, team medical staff displayed a cavalier attitude toward federal guidelines that govern dispensing medicine. In August 2009, Paul Sparling, the Cincinnati Bengals’ head trainer, wrote in an email: “Can you have your office fax a copy of your DEA certificate to me? I need it for my records when the NFL ‘pill counters’ come to see if we are doing things right. Don’t worry, I’m pretty good at keeping them off the trail!”
The Bengals did not make Sparling available for comment or respond to questions about his 2010 email.
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the allegations in the court filing “are meritless and the league and its clubs will continue to vigorously defend these claims.”
“The NFL clubs and their medical staffs are all in compliance with the Controlled Substances Act ...,” McCarthy said in an email. “The NFL clubs and their medical staffs continue to put the health and safety of our players first, providing all NFL players with the highest quality medical care. Any claim or suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong.”
The details and communications were unearthed by lawyers representing more than 1,800 former pro football players suing the league in U.S. District Court in Northern California, claiming they suffer long-term organ and joint damage, among other maladies, as a result of improper and deceptive drug distribution practices by NFL teams.
The players’ attorneys redacted large portions of the 127-page complaint because both parties agreed to do so under a court-approved protective order, sealing it from public view. The Washington Post was able to review the redacted information because of an apparent technical error in the filing process, but did not review some of the supporting exhibits and documents.
The filing solely reflects the ex-players’ claims against the NFL’s 32 teams, presenting their legal arguments and evidence to the court. Steven Silverman, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said he could not comment.
The court filing reveals the teams dispensed painkillers and prescription-strength anti-inflammatories in numbers far beyond anything previously acknowledged or made public. In 2012, for example, the average team prescribed nearly 5,777 doses of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and 2,213 doses of controlled medications to its players, according to a March 2013 internal document from Lawrence Brown, the NFL-employed medical adviser who oversees its drug issues.
Those numbers could average out to about six to seven pain pills or injections a week per player over the course of a typical NFL season, but sports medicine experts noted it’s unlikely the drugs were distributed evenly over the entire roster and just as unlikely that team logs represent the full extent of medications players seek out to manage pain.
“It sounds like an incredible amount of intervention with some pretty risky drugs, some of which, in the case of Vicodin, have a high addiction potential,” said Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center and co-founder of the NYU Sports and Society Program. “It makes you think, are the physicians looking out for the health of the players, or are they just trying to keep them on the field?”
Drug experts who reviewed the data cautioned that a thorough un- derstanding of the league’s use of pain medication is limited without knowing the exact dosages, types of controlled substances administered and whether all the players were consuming the medications or whether a smaller number accounted for a larger percentage of the drug use.
The filing likens painkillers to performance-enhancing drugs and says while players often felt compelled to use them to contribute, medical staffs felt pressured to administer them to remain competitive. A February 2006 memo included in the court filing was from the Minnesota Vikings’ head trainer, Eric Sugarman. Writing to then-head coach Brad Childress and the team’s vice-president for operations, the trainer said he met for three hours with team physician David Fischer and lamented the fact the Vikings weren’t regularly using a powerful painkiller called Toradol, as other teams were.
“I expressed my concern that (the Vikings) are at a competitive disadvantage ... I feel very strongly about this point ...,” he wrote. “I feel that Dr. Fischer is beginning to see my point of view on many issues. I also feel he is willing to change to improve.”
The Vikings did not respond to requests for comment and did not make Sugarman or Fischer available.
Health and safety practices in the NFL have been under scrutiny, most notably regarding head trauma from concussions and other long-term health issues faced by former players.
In their filing, the players’ lawyers cite multiple instances in which team executives and league officials were made aware of issues surrounding the handling of pain medication. League medical advisers Brown and Elliot Pellman communicated with team physicians on issues such as medication abuse and attended meetings of the NFL Physicians Society. The complaint cites a 1998 meeting of the society in which Brown reported that during an audit, at least “five teams were in non-compliance with controlled substances.”
The NFL declined to make the medical advisers available to comment.
Bud Carpenter, the Buffalo Bills’ longtime trainer, “admitted under oath that he witnessed team doctors give players injections of prescription medications without telling them what the drug was they were receiving or its side effects. ... He further testified that doctors provided prescription medications at places other than where they were allowed to do so in violation of federal and state laws.”
The Bills declined to comment on the remarks or make Carpenter or other team medical personnel available.
The case marks a rare instance in which the attorneys suing the NFL have gone to discovery. Cases often are pre-empted by the labour deal between the NFL and its players’ union because the collective bargaining agreement provides other avenues to settle grievances, such as arbitration.
The plaintiffs, though, are suing each of the 32 NFL teams rather than the league as a whole, and in July, U.S. District Judge William Alsup allowed this one to continue on the grounds that the plaintiffs’ allegations fall under the “illegality exception” to the collective bargaining rule.
While the case isn’t scheduled for trial until October, the players’ attorneys say in their filing they already have compiled “hundreds of thousands of pages of documents.”
The complaint recounts specific allegations against each of the 32 teams and details the widespread mishandling and disbursement of medications. The sealed documents might not provide a full picture of the league’s use of pain medications, but they do offer snapshots of how much teams rely on pharmaceuticals to put their players on the field each week.
According to the court filing: The Atlanta Falcons spent nearly $100,000 on prescriptions in a single year, nearly three times the league average; a Bengals trainer said he’s aware of teams that dispense 90 or more Vicodin pills per game; one drug inventory showed during seven months of 2004, the Indianapolis Colts administered 900 doses of Toradol and 585 doses of Vicodin.
Representatives for the Falcons, Jets and Steelers declined to comment. The Colts did not respond to a request for comment.
The former players also allege in the complaint they weren’t always sure what medicines they were taking and weren’t advised of the risks, because team doctors and trainers failed to inform them and keep proper records.
A majority of clubs as of 2010 had trainers controlling and handling prescription medications and controlled substances when they should not have. ANTHONY YATES, Steelers’ team doctor