JOSH GORDON IS DUMB; BUT SO IS THE NFL's POLICY ON WEED

               

              In the past four months the people of Cleveland experienced the type of ecstasy followed by agony that could only occur in the town whose fans have had to deal with The Drive, The Fumble & The Decision.

              In May , Johnny Manziel gets drafted by the Browns, giving hope to a downtrodden franchise that hasn’t won a championship since 1964. Then LeBron James returned to the Cavaliers in move that shook the entire NBA landscape and gave fans every reason to believe that an NBA Title is within their grasp.

 So what happens? Manziel struggles throughout the pre-season, getting more headlines for giving the Redskins the finger and being sacked by Michael Sam than for anything positive he did on the field, and now Josh Gordon, the Brown’s superstar wide receiver, failed another drug test for using marijuana and has been suspended for the entire 2014 season.

              First off, Gordon is an idiot and has nobody to blame but himself. As a previous violator of the NFL Substance Abuse Policy he was aware of the ramifications of a positive test and to act so recklessly after a career year will have long-term effects on his team and his future as well.

              That being said, it is time for the NFL to get with the times in the same way as the seventeen states that have de-criminalized marijuana to some degree (Meaning either outright legalization or limiting the charge of possession to the level of a traffic violation) and remove weed from the list of banned substances.

              If you ever spent any time around athletes, or any men in their twenties for that matter, it is no secret that a lot of them enjoy smoking pot. I’m sure that most of the players that indulge do it for recreational use. My friends –who will remain nameless- that smoke on a regular basis do it for the same reason I enjoy a scotch or two on Friday nights after work, it feels good and helps you relax.

 But you can’t tell me that these players don’t use it as a painkiller as well. And when it comes to painkiller use in the NFL, the league is far from being anti-drug. On the contrary, you can make the argument that they encourage what could broadly be defined as the use of performance enhancing drugs. If you can deal with your pain during recovery, you are going to play better, it’s common sense.

             Think of the hypocrisy of the NFL when it comes to drugs under their current rules. Let’s say you’re a backup linebacker and special-teams player coming off of shoulder surgery in the off-season and you are clinging to your job by a thread as the last pre-season game approaches.

             During the off-season, you would have been able to inject yourself with Human Growth Hormone in order to help in your rehab without fear of suspension since the NFL doesn’t currently test for HGH. That’s called willful blindness.

On Sunday morning, about an hour before kickoff, the team doctor can inject you with Toradol, a powerful anti-inflammatory drug that can have severe side effects but is ubiquitous in NFL locker rooms. In a report by the Washington Post on painkiller abuse in the NFL, Hall of Famer Warren Sapp said Toradol shots were dispensed like “tic-tacs” in the locker room.  After the game, in order to dull the throbbing pain in your shoulder, you can select from the training room a litany of other opiate based painkillers such as Vicodin and Percocet.

This is all endorsed –or in the case of HGH ignored- by Emperor Goodell and all of his 32 bosses throughout the league. All done in the guise that they are concerned with the health of their players and that player safety is paramount to the League’s goal……

 I’m sorry; I can’t even finish writing a sentence that reeks of so much hypocrisy. The next time the NFL states that player safety is paramount to their mission, think about how much NFL players must love playing on Thursday nights, just four days after their previous game when their injuries are still fresh, limiting their precious recovery time. And never forget that this is the same organization that spent decades denying obvious disability claims by CTE victims like Mike Webster and Ray Easterling, slowly dragging their heels through the legal system while players suffered through health problems related to dementia that many times led to suicide.

Until they reached a settlement with the NFLPA, the NFL spent millions of dollars in legal fees and avoided helping many of the greats in this game as they disputed the irrefutable fact that 300 pound men repeatedly slamming their heads into one another tends to cause brain damage.

But I digress, back to the backup linebacker. If this player hates needles or doesn’t want to risk getting addicted to the types of drugs that have led to addicts murdering drugstores full of people just to get steal more pills; and opts to get through the aches and pains that are a way of life to NFL players by lighting up a joint, you will be fined, suspended, and if it happens often enough, run out of the league.

Think about that for a minute.

I’m trying not to sound like Woody Harrelson at a Pro-Hemp Rally here but does anyone outside of the director of the DEA actually believe anymore that weed is so dangerous that the NFL needs to classify it with drugs like cocaine, heroin and crystal meth?

Please.

There is a reason that 17 states are moving towards full legalization like Colorado and Washington have; people enjoy smoking marijuana and it just isn’t all that dangerous. You can even make an argument, and win it pretty easily just by raw numbers, that alcohol is a far more dangerous drug based on any metric you can find.

For many people, this is their only vice. I don’t smoke; but when I was younger I enjoyed it a handful of times, but I can see why your average football player would be attracted to its effects.  

NFL players spend a huge portion of their lives living in pain. The injuries they play with every week would keep most adults in bed for days and away from their desk job, let alone a football field. Is it really such a big deal if they want to light up a few times of week to relax, numb those aches and get some sleep?

For those who say that the teams have an interest in keeping their players healthy and off drugs, I would say to look up the side effects of drugs like Toradol and Percocet. Better still; check the rates of overdoses of these drugs as compared to marijuana. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2010 there were 38,329 fatal drug overdoses in the United States, over 16,000 of them from opiate based painkillers like the drugs that the NFL doles out like candy to its players.

When was the last time you read about someone overdosing on weed? Or even committing a violent act for that matter? It is probably the mellowest drug out there. In contrast I’m willing to bet that every person reading this article has witnessed somebody drunk commit an extremely violent act.

If memory serves all I wanted to do when I smoked was sit on a couch, eat and watch movies. The only risks I ever felt were to my waistline.

If the argument against allowing players to indulge in pot is that they will abuse it and you will have meeting rooms full of sleeping potheads while the coaches are trying to go over game-plans I would just say that the teams can treat it the same way that they deal with alcohol. The NFL doesn’t stop players from drinking, they don’t even care when they get drunk. However, if you start getting DWIs, show up hung-over at practice and vomit in the huddle, the team is going to take some action; which means pretty much that if you are a starter, they will send you to Rehab, if you are a backup, you’ll get cut.

Is there any danger with treating marijuana the same way? If you use it in moderation, what is the harm? Now if a player develops a daily habit complete with a ritual of “Wake and Bake” and can’t make it through practice without sneaking off to the locker room for a bat hit, they have abused the privilege and it will be time to take some action.

Look at Gordon. Since his last suspension he had one of the most dominant seasons by a receiver in recent memory. While we aren’t privy to the internal day to day operations of the Browns there have been no reports of his missing meetings or skipping OTAs. By all reports he has been a model player since he re-joined his team last year. Is it a proportional response to now suspend this guy for a year for smoking weed when it clearly hasn’t affected his play or his contributions to the club?

These players live a tough existence. I know that nobody is forcing them to play and they get paid a lot of money but they deserve every dollar. They are the best in the world at a skill that generates billions of dollars for the networks, owners, and the league overall. More than any other pro athlete, they run the risk of being one play from retirement. In return for their limited years of glory the trade-off is crippling pain, sleepless nights and in many cases, decades of being disabled.

 Is it really too much to ask that they can smoke a blunt and relax on Sunday Night after slamming their bodies into one another for our personal enjoyment? Especially if they happened to live in a state where it isn’t even a crime?

Let them have their weed.