“We’re always interested in trying to improve our approach and our treatment for acute and chronic pain in NFL players, and we always want to make sure that our players are receiving the most up-to-date medical consensus around any of these treatments,” NFL chief medical officer Dr.
Kevin Hill, the Director of Addiction Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a pre-eminent cannabis researcher and author, is the co-chair of the NFL-NFLPA Joint Pain Management Committee.
“One reason is the scheduling of cannabis makes it harder to do this research but the main reason is that stakeholders really aren’t interested in advancing the science,” Hill told the AP.
“We really want to know do they work? And every day I meet with patients who are interested in cannabinoids and it’s the same thing, we really don’t know the answers to that.
Several former players are involved in the medical-cannabis business and have either started their own brands, invested in companies or been hired as ambassadors.
“We’ve heard from the teams, from the medical staffs, from the players loud and clear that they’re interested in cannabis and cannabinoids, and so we wanted to do something that would advance the science in this area so that we could have better informed conversations with them,” Hill said.
Under the most recent labor deal, players who test positive for marijuana are no longer suspended but they can be fined depending on the number of positive tests.
“This type of work is going to be of interest to athletes in many different sports and at all levels,” Sills said.