While society seems to be warming up to the idea of legalized marijuana, the same can’t be said for Roger Goodell.
The NFL commissioner made an appearance on ESPN’s “Mike & Mike” on Friday, and one of the topics he was asked about was marijuana. And it sure sounds like legal pot isn’t anywhere close on the horizon for the league.
“I think you still have to look at a lot of aspects of marijuana use,” Goodell said, as transcribed by ProFootballTalk. “Is it something that can be negative to the health of our players? Listen, you’re ingesting smoke, so that’s not usually a very positive thing that people would say. It does have addictive nature. There are a lot of compounds in marijuana that may not be healthy for the players long-term.
“All of those things have to be considered. And it’s not as simple as someone just wants to feel better after a game. We really want to help our players in that circumstance but I want to make sure that the negative consequences aren’t something that is something that we’ll be held accountable for some years down the road.”
Eight states — Washington, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Colorado, Alaska, Maine and Massachusetts — all have legalized recreational use of marijuana, according to Governing.com, and the number of states with legal medical marijuana is much higher than that.
Goodell appeared a bit more open to the idea of there one day being legal medical marijuana in the NFL, but even that appears a long way off.
“We look at it from a medical standpoint,” Goodell said, via PFT. “So if people feel that it has a medical benefit, the medical advisers have to tell you that. We have joint advisers, we also have independent advisers, both the NFLPA and the NFL, and we’ll sit down and talk about that. But we’ve been studying that through our advisers. To date, they haven’t said this is a change we think you should make that’s in the best interests of the health and safety of our players. If they do, we’re certainly going to consider that. But to date, they haven’t really said that.”
Apparently, Goodell and the NFL don’t feel the same way about painkillers.
Thumbnail photo via Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports Images
