If you try to read most of the marijuana articles you see online these days, you might not get much else done. Cannabis-hemp-marijuana has quickly become ubiquitous, and if you think it's big now just wait until America gets closer to elections.
Whether the discussion is about medicine, recreation or industry and with titles ranging from The Great Pot Experiment toScience Seeks to Unlock Marijuana’s Secrets, mainstream media has completely embraced the grass, weed, herb, green, MJ movement.
How could they not? It's a story about government propaganda gone amuck with over 80 years. A story about how a small group of powerful people pulled off the biggest smoke screen in American history. An epic tragedy of a wonderful plant that was woven into every fabric of society and then wrongly accused, dragged through the sewer and imprisoned for crimes it did not commit.
Here are a couple of the latest. From Bruce Barcott and Michael Scherer ofTime:
Legalization
keeps rolling ahead. But because of years of government roadblocks on
research, we don’t know nearly enough about the dangers of marijuana—or
the benefits
Also this one from Hampton Sides of National Geographic:
There’s nothing new about cannabis, of course. It’s been around humankind pretty much forever.
In Siberia charred seeds have been found inside burial
mounds dating back to 3000 B.C. The Chinese were using cannabis as a
medicine thousands of years ago. Marijuana is deeply American too—as
American as George Washington, who grew hemp at Mount Vernon. For most
of the country’s history, cannabis was legal, commonly found in
tinctures and extracts.
Then came Reefer Madness. Marijuana, the Assassin of Youth.
The Killer Weed. The Gateway Drug. For nearly 70 years the plant went
into hiding, and medical research largely stopped. In 1970 the federal
government made it even harder to study marijuana, classifying it as a
Schedule I drug—a dangerous substance with no valid medical purpose and a
high potential for abuse, in the same category as heroin. In America
most people expanding knowledge about cannabis were by definition
criminals.
Cannabis-hemp-marijuana is a plant with thousands of uses for medicine, industry, food, fuels and recreation. Time to pardon it nationally.
-- Home Page
The NFL has been dealing with two major issues: concussions and its outdated anti-marijuana policy despite changing times. In a twist of irony, the two may end up working together to make the NFL a safer place for the long run. Can marijuana really help someone with a concussion or prevent a player from getting one? Yes, it can.
NFL players are no strangers to marijuana. Former players like Nate Jackson and Lomas Brown have publicly estimated
about half of NFL athletes use it for relief. Jackson has said, "Marijuana was something that
helped me, (sic) as the season wore on, my body would start to break down. I
was in a lot of pain.”
Marijuana is among the oldest remedies for pain and stress. Its history dates back thousands of years before Vicodin, Percocet, Toradol and other dangerous pharmaceuticals handed out so freely by NFL medical personnel. Most people know the NFL is dealing with lawsuits related to concussions; not surprisingly it's dealing with drug policy litigation as well. How odd that one of the items on the banned substances list also has potential to heal the brain.
Concussions and CTE
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The helmet protects the skull, but it doesn't keep the brain from sloshing around during a hit. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) comes from repeated head traumas and can evolve into a degenerative brain disease. CTE
may have contributed to the suicides of NFL players Junior Seau and Jovan Belcher, who also killed his girlfriend. In cases of brain trauma, a lot of
inflammation occurs which affects brain function and neural connections. A compound in marijuana
called cannabidiol (CBD) has shown scientific potential to be an
antioxidant and neuroprotectant for the brain. Perhaps that's why some players instinctively prefer it.
Goodell, you still open to medical marijuana?
In January of 2014, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said, "We will
follow medicine and if they determine this could be a proper usage in
any context, we will consider that. Our medical experts
are not saying that right now." Goodell did not discuss what the other medical experts are saying, the ones who recommend marijuana over dangerous pharmaceuticals for concussion prevention and treatment. To the commissioner's credit, the NFL has made substantial efforts with rule changes for safer hitting methods, but that's not enough. He needs to acknowledge the opinions of more medical experts and requests from the players who understand what their bodies prefer for pain and inflammation.
Dr. Lester Grinspoon is one of those reaching out to the NFL commissioner. Grinspoon is a football fan and also Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He's authored many books including Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine. Dr. Grinspoon wrote Goodell a letter imploring him to actively support research into using cannabis
to treat longterm head trauma.
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Dr. Raphael Machoulam is professor of Medical Chemistry at Hebrew
University in Jerusalem. He's studied cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) for over 50 years and identified a major physiological system
(the endocannabinoid system) which seems to be involved in many human
diseases. Marijuana mimics compounds found in the brain, named
endocannabinoids, and are of immense importance
in bodily functions. Related compounds found more recently in
the brain and in bones have to do with brain protection and osteoporosis.
Clint Werner is a researcher and author of Marijuana Gateway to Health: How Cannabis Protects Us from Cancer and Alzheimer's Disease. Werner says, “Severe head injuries
automatically trigger the production of an excessive amount of
neurotransmitters called glutamates. When there are too many of these
chemicals in the brain, they can initiate a chain reaction of cell
degradation and impairment. The cannabinoids, which we find in
marijuana, work as effective antioxidants, potentially neutralizing the
glutamate activity and stopping the cascade of neuronal damage that can
follow.”
NFL Concussion Litigation
In April of 2015 a
federal judge approved the class-action lawsuit settlement
between the NFL and thousands of former players. The total may cost the league $1 billion over 65 years, providing up to $5 million per retired player for serious medical conditions associated with repeated head trauma. Sounds expensive, a shipload more than what it would cost to fund some marijuana research.
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave?
4 states (Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon) and Washington D.C. have legalized recreational marijuana while 23 states allow some form of medical marijuana. (Update November 2016, 4 more states have legalized adult recreational use and many have added medicinal legislation.)
Marijuana is going to be legal again in the US. It's not a question of if but of when. The NFL has a chance to be ahead of the game here. Why not let these adults choose for themselves, Mr. Goodell, and remove it from the list of banned substances? Marijuana is not something athletes use for a competitive edge like steroids, and it's not a dangerous drug despite the brain-washing that's been going on since Reefer Madness in 1936. The NHL does not test for marijuana; the NFL shouldn't either. Former Super Bowl champions, Marvin Washington, Brendon Ayanbadejo and Scott Fujita have asked the NFL to change its marijuana policy. Let's hope more athletes, celebrities and politicians will have the wisdom and the guts to make similar statements. Let's also hope the NFL and the US in general can back away from the "tough on drugs" policy that has been status quo for far too long.
relegalize.info/hemp/advocates.shtml
Americans are supposed to be granted "inalienable rights" to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness from the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps the greatest irony in all of this is that the US Government holds a patent (#6630507) for marijuana as a neuroprotectant, while simultaneously classifying marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug with no medical value. Yep, that's our government at work. What would our forefathers say? You know, the ones who grew hemp for just about everything.
