Al Harrington, who first started in the NBA in Indiana in 1998 as a high school Draft pick, is a big supporter of legal medical marijuana.
Ironically, he never even tried it as a kid. He said, “I never tried it as a kid. My boys were smoking when we were kids and I never tried it. I was always so scared to try it. I felt like if I came home and I smelled like weed, my mother would kill me.”
He started supporting marijuana later in life when he tried everything else after chronic knee and joint pain.
The ex-player has used medical marijuana creams on his sore knees.
“I didn’t have to do much research because I was in Denver when everything started to go legal,” Harrington said. “I’m one of those guys that reads the paper the next day to see what they said about the team. And it was always in the paper, every single day. So I was always reading up on it, reading up on it.”
When Harrington retired in 2014, he developed marijuana businesses in three states.
His company is called Viola Extracts, named after his grandmother, and is a one-stop grower, distributing and selling to more than 30 legal marijuana stores around the country.
“I travel more than I did when I played in the league. I gambled on myself and I put everything on my own plate. I’ve learned the industry,” Harrington remarked.
“I’m now at the point where, personally, I think it probably should be removed from the banned list,” said former NBA Commissioner David Stern. Stern was talking to Harrington in a segment for a piece on Harrington’s new business that aired recently on Uninterrupted.
