Marijuana Superbowl reflects the NFL and the United States

This article was originally published on the Marijuana Patients Organization site on January 21, 2014.

Who would have ever guessed the Seattle Seahawks would play the Denver Broncos in this year’s Superbowl? Both teams hail from states where marijuana was made legal this year, the first two states to legalize cannabis use for adults.

The National Football League has a long history with marijuana use. While the US government estimates that less than 10% of the US population actively uses marijuana, NFL figures suggest that 75% of the leagues players engage in marijuana use.

Perhaps players enjoy both the medical and recreational aspects of marijuana. After all if you coached a football team would you prefer your players get drunk or stoned the night before a game. The NFL execs cannot exactly label marijuana as ‘performance enhancing’.

Former Detroit Lions lineman, Lomas Brown claims that 50 to 90 percent of NFL players smoke marijuana and this claim is supported by these recent findings.

• Four out of 10 draft-eligible prospects from the 2012 class failed at least one school-administered drug test for marijuana; two in 10 failed multiple times, per a CBS Sports report from April.
• “About 70 percent” of prospects at the combine admitted to using marijuana, per an ESPN report.
• A 2009 report by the NCAA stated 26.7 percent of all football players admitted using marijuana over the past 12 months, the highest number of any athlete group they surveyed.

If professional athletes consume marijuana responsibly to relax and it helps with their aches and pains, then why can the general public not be trusted to do the same. After all aren’t our professional athletes our nation’s role models.