Just days ahead of the Super Bowl, the National Football League standards for evaluating proposals, the NFL Research & Innovation Committee then narrowed the field to 10 finalists who gave oral presentations and provided written materials to the Committee.
“As with the league’s broader approach to health and safety, we want to ensure that our players are receiving care that reflects the most up-to-date medical consensus,” Dr.
The first of the studies, “Effects of Cannabinoids on Pain and Recovery from Sports-Related Injuries in Elite Athletes,” will be a randomized clinical trial led by doctors Thomas Marcotte and Mark Wallace at UC San Diego.
The press release says that “elite athletes will vaporize treatments following game-related injuries,” with outcomes monitored via remote phone apps.
“Our team is excited to receive this funding to conduct a systematic, ‘real-world, real-time’ study with professional athletes, and which should shed further light upon the many anecdotal reports that cannabis is helpful in reducing post-competition pain,” says Dr.
It will explore the efficacy and safety of CBD and THC specifically to reduce the use of prescription medications such as opioids to treat post-concussion syndrome.
Our interdisciplinary research team believes that different cannabinoid formulations found in medical cannabis have the potential to benefit athletes suffering from the acute and long-term chronic effects of concussions.
In comments picked up by ESPN, cannabis researcher Dr.
“We’ve heard from the teams, from the medical staffs, from the players loud and clear that they’re interested in cannabis and cannabinoids, 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.
However, the NFL press release is quick to emphasize that while results of the studies “may inform alternative pain management strategies,” they will have no impact on the “Policy & Program on Substances of Abuse” in place under the current NFL-NFLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Cannabis remains a banned substance in the NFL, although testing requirements and rules on NFL players’ personal cannabis use were loosened in the latest collective bargaining agreement.
It is not feasible for us to use NFL players at this time, and the University of California San Diego has close ties to the professional rugby community.