The NFL’s Pot Prohibition Has to End

Siblings of Mark Wahlberg9 years ago

In the real world, my occupation requires me to handle some of people’s most personal and important matters, often times without ever having met before. No, I am not a male prostitute. However, sitting in my office this morning, listening to the assorted clowns on ESPN Radio discuss “pot in the NFL,” I couldn’t help but wonder: why does anyone care if an offensive lineman gets high?

If I fuck up at work, it could have immeasurable consequences on the lives of people entrusting us (meaning my company) with their financial/personal futures. Yet, after almost a full year on the job, at no point have I ever been drug tested, not even as a summer intern last year.

I won’t speculate how I’d fare if I was, but I can guarantee you half my division is railing more lines than Patrick Bateman and the company cocktail hour looks more like a Parkinson’s convention by last call.

That brings me to the utter absurdity of the NFL’s drug policy and testing under Czar Goodell. If much of the financial and legal sector of our economy can be in the midst of perpetual ski trips, the medical industry has accepted marijuana as medicinal, and an increasing number of states allow literally anyone of age to buy it, why can’t a guy who tackles people for a living get high?

When was the last time you got a “competitive advantage” from smoking weed that didn’t involve an eating competition? Sitting alone on your couch wondering if Tesla CEO Elon Musk is right and this world really is “just a simulation of an alternate reality” and mixing Oreos with chocolate syrup while laughing hysterically at Seth Rogen does not sound like much of a leg up on the rest of the league.

Yet, for whatever reason, we still see players of immense ability (Bryant, Gordon, etc.) fined MILLIONS of dollars and careers derailed over…using something they could legally buy after a game against the Broncos? I just don’t get it.

If you’re going to ban and severely punish for the use of marijuana and are naïve enough to believe you could even formulate some semblance of a league without ANY drug users (how many Tebow brothers are there?), you better go ahead and outlaw alcohol, too.

Last time I checked, most bar fights are alcohol related, no? Pacman Jones bit a stripper while “extremely intoxicated.” The NFL has had more DUIs since 2010 than any other major professional sports league. Alcohol kills more people in America per year than stomach cancer. Dez Bryant nearly beat up his own mother drunk (allegedly). This shit is an epidemic, right?

Roger Goodell, the NFL’s self-anointed dean of discipline, spends more time obsessing over Tom Brady’s ball PSI than the well being of his league, but more importantly, the players that propelled the NFL to all 10 of the highest rated sporting events of 2015.

I’m not a “pothead” by any means, but I can’t fucking stand hypocrisy and injustice. NFL players suffer the most profound, life altering, and repeated injuries of any professional sports league on the planet not named UFC. The pain must be endless, the suffering perpetual, all for an average career of three years and barely a million bucks in gross salary, while the NFL Commissioner makes more in a single year ($35 million) than an averaged salaried player in his league would in thirty full seasons. Think about that for a second.

I’m not a Communist. I love money, so good for you, Roger. But Roger Goodell is not the NFL, nor is anybody else in management. The league exists, and profits immensely, on the backs of Tom Brady, Cam Newton, Dez Bryant, Julio Jones, Antonio Brown, JJ Watt, Von Miller, and the nearly 1,500 other professional football players that risk their longterm health not only every Sunday, but every day of practice, mini camp, and OTAs, to make the NFL the greatest sports related product on this planet.

Smoking pot should never jeopardize a single quarter, nor dollar earned, of their careers..

Image via YouTube