Hey, NFL, just move on
League’s marijuana policies should go up in smoke
It’s time for the NFL to stop penalizing marijuana use by its players as states, including the country’s most populous, California, continue to open doors to recreational and medical use. The simple reason: There are more important things to worry about. Worry about violent crimes, including the league’s struggles to police domestic violence among its own players. Lose front-office sleep over drugs that enhance performance and create truly unfair competitive advantages. Hand-wring all you want and need, NFL. Just stop with marijuana. It’s grown into the league’s No. 1 non-issue, as proved by leaps and bounds in ballot booths from Bakersfield to Boston. And deep down the NFL, as brand and image conscious as any professional sport, knows it. California’s recent passage of Proposition 64 allowed conditional recreational use by citizens 21 and older. Three other states — Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada — did the same thing. It’s already legal for recreational use in Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Alaska. Nearly a quarter of the NFL’s teams now play in states where recreational use is legal. More than half of the states in the U.S. now allow medical use. The stigma and arguments for the continued policy vanish with each puff-puff-passing day. And that doesn’t even address the potential saner, safer, natural pain-management benefits for players battered by America’s most violent pastime. Pittsburgh Steelers guard Ramon Foster, the team’s union representative, argued to USA Today that allowing marijuana use to combat pain could steer players away from addictive opioids. “Would you rather have somebody that smokes occasionally or someone that, when you take that away from him, you have the guy that’s downing a fifth of Hennessy every night, or Tito’s Vodka. Is that what you want?” said Foster, according to USA Today. “Would you rather have somebody that smokes marijuana at home, don’t go anywhere, or would you rather have the guy at the bar taking shots after shots? Why?” He’s right. Alcohol, though more socially accepted, has the potential to create and cultivate more damaging short- and long-term problems. Yes, the NFL has the right and, we’d all likely argue, the responsibility to insist on “higher standards” in its workplace. Does the country agree, though, that it’s truly a higher standard — and one worth fighting to defend? The NFL and NFLPA already agreed to loosen and lessen marijuana-related policies when the league’s current drug policy was passed in September 2014. The league, though, remains mired in half-steps. This doesn’t mean locker rooms and the game’s public spaces will become Amsterdam hash dens, hazier than the milky skies over Beijing. That isn’t the intent and no one would allow it. And, no one should. Be assured, too, that the league and the NFL Players Association — which confirmed to the Washington Post that it’s forming a pain-management committee — will do its due diligence on medical science and data. The NFL will encounter tangles and hurdles, without a doubt. There’s the issue of teams playing in states where marijuana use is not legal. There’s federal law. In the end, though, the NFL controls who it suspends and for what. The league and the players association can ensure equity. Some will argue that players allowed to use weed will do so for reasons beyond managing pain. So what? How does that affect you, me or the game? Save the time and effort for things that really impact the sport in negative or unfair ways. The discussion isn’t going away. In fact, it’s building steam. NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport reported that a survey of 10 team owners and top executives showed most support rethinking marijuana-related suspensions. To those worried that it sends the wrong message about drug use: Alcohol, by all accounts, is far more addictive. Millions watched the movie “Concussion,” which detailed the horrible impact of concussions and CTE in former players. If a continually more accepted, natural substance like marijuana could help address pain for that and other injuries in scientifically supportable ways, why oppose it? Trust in this: The pain will be addressed, some way and somehow. Proposition 64’s victory and the marijuana-use votes in the three other states offers ammunition, opportunity and timing to discuss the topic more broadly — including inside the jarring world of professional football. It’s time to let the opposition go. Move on, NFL.