Several former NFL players advocated the use of cannabis as a healing medicine Saturday during the Southwest Cannabis Conference and Expo in Phoenix.
A six-member panel consisted of four former NFL athletes — including Marvin Washington, Mark Restelli, Jim McMahon and Grant Mattos — discussed the benefits of the medical use of cannabis for athletes in the NFL alongside cannabis therapeutics specialist, Uma Dhanabalan, and former Colorado State University student-athlete, Treyous Jarrells.
Former New York Jet Marvin Washington said allowing the use of marijuana by athletes would help address major problems.
He identified the key health issues facing NFL players as concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease that has been found in numerous former NFL players, along with opiates addiction to address pain.
Washington said that the use of marijuana could help address both.
“Put people first, it’s all about the patients,” Washington said. “They’re not trying to get high, they’re trying to feel better.”
With an injured left knee that led to four major surgery’s in three years, Restelli, a former Miami Dolphin, said his career-ending injury was the reason he became a medical marijuana advocate nearly six years ago. He was with the Dolphins early in 2011 but was released.
“We are highly motivated world-class athletes that use cannabis on a daily basis to treat issues that we have from playing,” Restelli said.
Restelli works in collaboration with two California-based cannabis companies, CannTrade and Harvest One, because he “fell in love with the process of growing and the medical side of how cannabis treated the mind and body.”
Jarrells, who tore a knee ligament that ended his college athletic career, said even though opiates and pain killers were an option, cannabis has always been his preferred alternative to address pain issues.
In contrast to other pharmaceuticals such as opiates, Dhanabalan said we should “embrace and empower” the healthy, happy and healing “cannabinoid” and advocated a push to end the stigma associated with marijuana.
According to Dhanabalan, the United States has just five percent of the world population, yet, Americans use 80 percent of the world opiates.
“We’ve been talking about this opiate epidemic and how many people have died from cannabis? Nobody in the world has ever died from this,” Dhanabalan said. “It is not an entrance drug, it’s an exit drug from pharmaceuticals, narcotics and alcohol.”
credit:azcentral.com
