NFL Players High on More Than the Game

Your child’s favorite NFL player likely gets high before a game.

Pro football, one of the most revered and respected sports franchises in our nation’s history, is finishing up week two of its fall season this weekend. A detailed report in the New York Post on Sunday outlined just how many of the players are getting ready for kick-off (it also mentioned how many in the recent past have done so).

Related: Medical Marijuana is a Big Lie

“Before he suited up to play against the New York Giants in 2012, Jacksonville Jaguars offensive lineman Eben Britton took an ice bath followed by a hot shower. He did his routine stretches. Then he smoked a joint,” the Post reported.

“In fact, Britton — who also played for the Chicago Bears but left the league in 2014 — tells The Post he played three NFL games while high on marijuana,” it also said.

Britton and a number of other NFL players, even doctors, admitted that as many as 50 percent of NFL players currently smoke pot, and that’s on the low end of estimates, the Post article noted. Britton said a better guess may be that upwards of 75 to 80 percent of fellow teammates use marijuana vs. opioids to deal with injuries, improve performance, and better socialize with teammates and others when they’re off the field.

“Kids are being told marijuana is good for them and not addictive, when the science says the opposite,” said Dr. Kevin Sabet.

The already systemic use of marijuana is most likely behind the push by former and current NFL players to get the league to lift the ban on the drug.

“Adults and adult players talking about their marijuana smoking and promoting it as medical is incredibly irresponsible given that these guys are role models for young people,” Dr. Kevin Sabet, co-founder of the nonprofit group Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), told LifeZette. Sabet is also an assistant professor of psychiatry and director of the Drug Policy Institute at the University of Florida.

“And now, at a time when marijuana has reached record potencies and it’s being delivered in things like candies and sodas and ice cream, particularly to get young people addicted, the last thing we need are our sports players talking about how this has been good for them,” Sabet told LifeZette.

Related: High as a Kite Before Kickoff

Research for the past few decades has shown marijuana actually blunts motivation — it’s called amotivational syndrome, said Sabet — and it’s common among people who smoke marijuana regularly.

“Also, we don’t smoke any ‘medicine.’ So the science isn’t there about smoking marijuana and how it ‘helps’ people with injuries. If anything, the science is very clear that because THC has grown in potency so much — the active ingredient in marijuana that gets you high — it actually damages the brain in many ways and some long-lasting ways,” said Sabet.

The NFL noted that medical experts have not recommended making a change or revisiting the collectively bargained policy and approach [between the NFL and the NFL Players Association] that is related to marijuana.

“Our position on its use remains consistent with federal law and workplace policies across the country,” Brian McCarthy, a spokesman for the NFL, told the Post.

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If that’s truly the policy, perhaps it should be better enforced. Promoting pot as some miracle drug that can cure every ailment isn’t helping anyone — especially NFL players already struggling to maintain long-term healthy brain function after years of injuries to their heads during games.

“I think this sends an absolutely terrible message to college and high school sports and to kids all over the country,” Sabet told LifeZette. “Right now, kids are being told marijuana is good for them and it’s not addictive, when the science says the opposite. It’s very clear what the science says about it. We don’t need the NFL adding fuel to that fire.”