Just as there have unquestionably been more gay NFL players before Michael Sam and will continue to be after, even if the general football-viewing public never hears anything about it, there's no doubting there are many more marijuana users in the National Football League beyond the select few that are dumb enough to get caught every season and offseason.
"It's at least 60 percent now," former NFL running back Jamal Anderson said recently, via Mike Freeman of Bleacher Report. "That's bare minimum. That's because players today don't believe in the stigma that older people associate with smoking it. To the younger guys in the league now, smoking weed is a normal thing, like having a beer. Plus, they know that smoking it helps them with the concussions."
Anderson, who played exclusively for the Atlanta Falcons during an eight-year NFL career, said that during his time in the league "40 to 50 percent" of NFL players used marijuana, meaning there's been a 10 to 20 percent increase in the decade-plus since he retired.
Anderson, per Freeman, stays in "regular contact" with players now, which is where his estimation comes from, but those are figures also backed by current players.
According to Freeman, one player he spoke to said during an interview that he believes "smoking marijuana helped prevent him from attempting suicide" and that use of it within the NFL is "extensive" because it helps them to deal with the "ramifications of head trauma."
Freeman conducted interviews with 16 active NFL players and found that many players who have never failed a drug test and, therefore, are not subject to multiple tests, smoke weed "weekly after games and occasionally after tough regular season practices."
Former NFL player Nate Jackson, speaking at a marijuana business convention in March, said that the league is well aware of the rampant use of marijuana by players.
"They're aware that probably over half of their players smoke weed. They've been doing it since they were teenagers. The fact that they've been doing it that whole time and still made it to the NFL and are able to satisfy the demands of very, very strict employers on a daily basis means that their marijuana use is in check," Jackson said while appearing at the Cannabis Business Executives Breakfast that kicked off a three-day conference titled "Sports, Meds and Money," via Huffington Post. "Marijuana is not a problem in their lives."
Jackson said that he preferred using marijuana as a pain-relieving option over the opiates offered by team doctors.
"It kept my brain clean. I feel like I exited the game with my mind intact. And I credit that to marijuana in a lot of ways and not getting hooked on these pain pills that are recklessly distributed in the league when a guy gets an injury," Jackson said.
Jackson's fear of painkillers was shared by other NFL players, like former New Orleans Saints linebacker Scott Fujita.
"I've always been concerned about the use, overuse and in some cases, mismanagement and abuse of painkillers among us," Fujita told Patrick Hruby of Sports on Earth in 2013. "Generally, I tried to avoid using painkillers if I could get by without them, because I was always concerned about creating a dependency or an addiction. But I've had to rely on drugs of some kind quite a bit throughout my career, whether it's Toradol, other NSAIDs, Vicodin, Percocet. And even though I would consider my use much less than that of many others, I still feel like I've put way too many harmful materials in my body to play this game."
The NFL, for it's part, has not taken an interest in the possible benefits of medical marijuana over opiates to this point.
"On the issue of medical marijuana, the medical advisors to our drug program tell us that there is no need for medical marijuana to be prescribed to an NFL player," the league said in a statement to Bleacher Report.
In the end, it will likely be years before any type of rule change involving the use of marijuana comes for the NFL. It will almost assuredly require definitive scientific proof that the smoking or ingestion of marijuana has positive effects in regards to brain trauma as the players Freeman interviewed indicated along with the full federal decriminalization of weed - at present, 20 states have decriminalized it to some degree.
What may be most important in regards to Freeman's report though, it the increasing awareness on the part of NFL players that there really are long-term ramifications for the repeated head trauma they suffer during their time in the league and that something proactive must be done to ensure that the suicides and domestic violence issues which have plagued the NFL news cycle recently, cease to be.
