A six-member panel over the weekend at the Southwest Cannabis Conference and Expo in Phoenix featured four former NFL players who are advocating for cannabis as a healing medicine.
The four players: Former New York Jets player Marvin Washington, former Miami Dolphins player Mark Restelli, former Chargers Broncos and Titans player Grant Mattos, and former Chicago Bears player Jim McMahon, sat next to cannabis therapeutics specialist Uma Dhanabalan and former Colorado State University student-athlete Treous Jarrells.
According to Washington, cannabis use by athletes would help address major problems such as concussions, and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is a brain disease that many former NFL players have. It would also address the problem of opiates addiction.
“Put people first, it’s all about the patients,” Washington said. “They’re not trying to get high, they’re trying to feel better.”
Restelli commented, “We are highly motivated world-class athletes that use cannabis on a daily basis to treat issues that we have from playing.” Restelli has had four major surgeries on an injured knee that ended his career.
According to Dhanabalan, the United States with only five percent of the world population uses 80 percent of the world opiates.
Jarrells suffered a torn knee ligament that ended his college sports career and has always preferred cannabis to help with his pain.
“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.”
