Weed to heal sport injuries?

Former NFL players want the league to allow marijuana use as painkillers, arguing that it's better than pharmaceuticals.

Transcript

00:00Pills are something you could do all day long. You could be sitting in meetings taking pills,

00:03whereas marijuana, you can't do that in meetings. You can't be at practice smoking weed.

00:12For me, it helped me take my mind off my body and the pain

00:16and it wasn't physically addictive. There were no withdrawal symptoms.

00:23If we have to take all this medication, all these pharmaceuticals just to

00:27practice, it can't be good for our bodies in the long run and that's

00:30when I started to look at my health seriously and look for alternatives.

00:38I probably think there's an equal painkiller culture in the NFL.

00:43Oxys, Roxys, Percocets, Vicodin, Somas, muscle relaxers, anything I can get my hands on.

00:50There's nothing that's going to change about this sport as far as the injuries are concerned.

00:55What needs to change is how we address these injuries and the medications that are given to

01:00treat them. Listen, you're ingesting smoke, so that's not usually a very positive thing

01:11that people would say. It does have addictive nature. There are a lot of compounds in

01:17marijuana that may not be healthy for the players long term. All of those things have to be

01:21considered and it's not as simple as someone just wants to feel better after a game.