The NFL is considering allowing players to use marijuana for medicinal purposes. No exact word on how seriously they're considering it. They could have a large committee representing various factions and specialties within the medical establishment poring over vast quantities of data, or they could just have a couple kickers watching clips of That 70's Show and writing notes on old pizza boxes and thinking Laura Prepon could be cast in The Erin Andrews Story.
What kinda name is "Topher" ?
Either way this represents a major stride for the No Fun League. They have always allowed their name and logo to be slapped on anti-drug "public service" announcements and straight-laced community efforts, even when nine out of ten guys in the league were banging some kinda anabolic or snorting Black Beauties. It was so well known that players were on every kind of human and racehorse pharmaceutical imaginable that in the 80's, beloved political comic strip Doonesbury did months of strips lampooning the Washington Redskins. Uncle Duke, the character sorta loosely based entirely on Hunter S. Thompson was the team's fictional General manager and drug pipeline. But now Roger Fault-rey is ready to belt out that certain drugs are not that bad "mmmmmkay".
This actually might be more of a victory for marijuana advocates than it is for the league. I would like to think that it would be hard for a guy in suburban Detroit, Boston, San Francisco, etc, to vote for local ordinances against dispensaries when he knows his Offensive Guard neighbor is recovering from that hamstring injury with the help of some O.G. Kush. I was actually shocked to find out that in an ESPN poll, 25% of NFL fans are opposed to marijuana use being sanctioned for players. (31,000 had responded, including myself when I last checked). That's 7750 against.
I gotta figure 2000 of those people work in the pain pill industry and are afraid of layoffs in the wake of a massive switch to a natural remedy.
I gotta figure 3000 of those people are old enough to remember the late 60's and Kent State and all that and are just anti-drug across the board no matter what.
And I gotta figure 3 of those people have gotten into a fender bender with Tommy Chong.
To the 2747 other people, I say this:
You mean to tell me that you want to watch, wear the jersey of and bet on a guy who is gonna purposely throw his body into a swarming mass of 300 lb. guys whose job it is to toss him to frozen turf like a rag doll, then get up and do it again 35 more times, but you want to limit his choice of medications to shit created in a lab and not something that could be and probably is grown in your kid's dorm room at Appalachian State ? You can't possibly believe that pills are more controllable than weed, can you ? Brett Favre was by his own admission addicted to Vicodin, and even years later his brain was so addled he thought it was a good idea to sign with the Jets and the Vikings.
Pills can be very, very dangerous. If pills are so great, how come they made Rush Limbaugh deaf instead of mute, HUH ?
I realize that weed made Dave Matthews a millionaire and that's a horrible, horrible thing, but it's isolated. Barbecue made Tony Siragusa, but that didn't make you start voting against grilling meat in polls, did it ??
If you don't think weed is Lawrence Taylor-made for the rhythms, speed and chaos of the NFL I present to you the immortal DC rastafarian punk band, The Bad Brains:
There is an I Against I in this Team
See, just because weed makes many people laconic and like to mow the lawn in a paisley pattern like sometime next week, others actually thrive and excel. If you listen to the song, you'll understand.(Let's see Kyle Turley play that riff). If he can, maybe he was smoking pot his whole career and using a Whizzinator. And that's another thing, how can you be against it when you know players were going out of their way to use it ? Pot isn't a performance enhancer in the classic sense of the term, but I'm damn sure if they give it to cancer patients for pain, it works wonders for guys with hip flexor injuries ( full disclosure-I'm never really sure if the flexor is the part that's injured or the injury itself).
It's pot people. It won't kill ya or your favorite linebacker. It will help. I won't apologize for being in support of its use in the NFL until I see a guy with "Ants Marching" painted on his eyeblack.
Either way this represents a major stride for the No Fun League. They have always allowed their name and logo to be slapped on anti-drug "public service" announcements and straight-laced community efforts, even when nine out of ten guys in the league were banging some kinda anabolic or snorting Black Beauties. It was so well known that players were on every kind of human and racehorse pharmaceutical imaginable that in the 80's, beloved political comic strip Doonesbury did months of strips lampooning the Washington Redskins. Uncle Duke, the character sorta loosely based entirely on Hunter S. Thompson was the team's fictional General manager and drug pipeline. But now Roger Fault-rey is ready to belt out that certain drugs are not that bad "mmmmmkay".
This actually might be more of a victory for marijuana advocates than it is for the league. I would like to think that it would be hard for a guy in suburban Detroit, Boston, San Francisco, etc, to vote for local ordinances against dispensaries when he knows his Offensive Guard neighbor is recovering from that hamstring injury with the help of some O.G. Kush. I was actually shocked to find out that in an ESPN poll, 25% of NFL fans are opposed to marijuana use being sanctioned for players. (31,000 had responded, including myself when I last checked). That's 7750 against.
I gotta figure 2000 of those people work in the pain pill industry and are afraid of layoffs in the wake of a massive switch to a natural remedy.
I gotta figure 3000 of those people are old enough to remember the late 60's and Kent State and all that and are just anti-drug across the board no matter what.
And I gotta figure 3 of those people have gotten into a fender bender with Tommy Chong.
To the 2747 other people, I say this:
You mean to tell me that you want to watch, wear the jersey of and bet on a guy who is gonna purposely throw his body into a swarming mass of 300 lb. guys whose job it is to toss him to frozen turf like a rag doll, then get up and do it again 35 more times, but you want to limit his choice of medications to shit created in a lab and not something that could be and probably is grown in your kid's dorm room at Appalachian State ? You can't possibly believe that pills are more controllable than weed, can you ? Brett Favre was by his own admission addicted to Vicodin, and even years later his brain was so addled he thought it was a good idea to sign with the Jets and the Vikings.
Pills can be very, very dangerous. If pills are so great, how come they made Rush Limbaugh deaf instead of mute, HUH ?
I realize that weed made Dave Matthews a millionaire and that's a horrible, horrible thing, but it's isolated. Barbecue made Tony Siragusa, but that didn't make you start voting against grilling meat in polls, did it ??
If you don't think weed is Lawrence Taylor-made for the rhythms, speed and chaos of the NFL I present to you the immortal DC rastafarian punk band, The Bad Brains:
See, just because weed makes many people laconic and like to mow the lawn in a paisley pattern like sometime next week, others actually thrive and excel. If you listen to the song, you'll understand.(Let's see Kyle Turley play that riff). If he can, maybe he was smoking pot his whole career and using a Whizzinator. And that's another thing, how can you be against it when you know players were going out of their way to use it ? Pot isn't a performance enhancer in the classic sense of the term, but I'm damn sure if they give it to cancer patients for pain, it works wonders for guys with hip flexor injuries ( full disclosure-I'm never really sure if the flexor is the part that's injured or the injury itself).
It's pot people. It won't kill ya or your favorite linebacker. It will help. I won't apologize for being in support of its use in the NFL until I see a guy with "Ants Marching" painted on his eyeblack.
Roger Goodell said, "if medical experts ever say medical marijuana would help with concussions then [he] would consider allowing it." And the previous week, he answered a medicinal marijuana question by saying, "I don't know what's going to develop as far as the next opportunity for medicine to evolve and to help either deal with pain or help deal with injuries, but we will continue to support the evolution of medicine."
ReplyDeleteRead More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nfl/news/20140123/nfl-marijuana-legalization/#ixzz2rffpYBnM
I saw the quote, but I don't make a habit of quoting that barrister. The cool thing about being a blogger as opposed to a journalist is that I can just run with an idea. I don't know what the odds are that it ever happens, but there are far more comedic possibilities for THC in the NFL than I touched on in this little essay.
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