Culture
Sports Leagues Should Reduce Anti-Marijuana Stigma And Provide Honest Education For Athletes, New NFL-Funded Study Concludes
Interest in using marijuana for medical reasons is growing among athletes as more states enact legalization, but many feel they aren’t getting adequate information about cannabis from their teams’ and leagues’ health officials due to ongoing stigma around the issue, a new study funded by the National Football League (NFL) shows.
“Elite contact sport athletes use cannabis intentionally for recreational, therapeutic, and recovery purposes but face systemic barriers related to misinformation, stigma, and inconsistent policy guidance,” the study, published this month in the journal Sports Health, says. “As cannabis legality expands, this potential knowledge gap impairs athletes’ ability to make informed decisions about cannabis for health and performance. Lack of knowledge increases exposure to unregulated products, and may cause athletes to overlook potential therapeutic benefits.”
The paper, written by researchers at the University of Saskatchewan and University of Regina in Canada, notes that major sports leagues have changed their policies in recent years to remove strict punishments for cannabis use.
Most recently, for example, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) this year removed marijuana from its prohibited substances list while also laying out rules for how players can invest in and promote cannabis companies.
“With sports leagues removing cannabis from the banned substance list, athletes increasingly rely on personal experience or peer advice to guide them, with minimal formal education ever provided,” the new study says.
The research, which was partially funded by the joint pain management committee overseen by the NFL and the NFL Players Association, involved interviews with 10 current or former elite contact sport athletes from professional and collegiate leagues. That includes the NFL as well as the National Basketball Association (NBA), National Hockey League (NHL), National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and others.
Participants described using cannabis for “pain management, mental health support, relaxation, recovery, sleep, perceived neuroprotective benefits and preferring cannabis to alcohol in social situations,” the paper says.
The researchers highlighted a number of specific comments athletes made during their interviews:
- “It [cannabis] makes you focus on other things, or just not being focused on how bad my neck would hurt.”
- “It puts your body at ease, and it’s far better than taking any sort of pain killer in my experience, from a prolonged long-term perspective for sure.”
- “I stopped drinking alcohol because of the adverse effects. My freshman year I consumed a lot of alcohol, and I found it was really bad for both my mental and physical health. I think I wanted to explore an alternative. I wanted to try both the therapeutic and recreational [use of cannabis]. It was just kind of experimental.”
- “It has always been something that I found meditative and grounding, the mental spiritual components of it, and then, physically it puts your body at ease.”
- “The positive effects I felt [from cannabinoids] with sleep and rest is definitely good.”
- “I sleep better using cannabis at night than I did taking T3s [Tylenol with codeine]… A better effect on my health when it comes to sleep dealing with inflammation and arthritis.”
- “I totally used cannabis throughout having those concussions and it helped me a lot with the pain and the recovery.”
- “It helped me focus a lot. Sometimes I would use it in the spring months when I had exams, and it would help me really dial in on a video or on a subject.”
Even as stigma surrounding cannabis is being reduced amid the growing legalization movement and as leagues are beginning to change older anti-marijuana policies, however, athletes still “anticipate or experience judgment from teammates, organizations, and the public, especially in shared spaces such as hotel rooms and locker rooms,” the study says.
There is also an ongoing fear of being punished over cannabis and of having to deal with public relations and image issues stemming from legal issues in jurisdictions where marijuana is still criminalized.
Drug testing policies also “reinforced fear and raised fairness concerns, as athletes questioned why cannabis was treated like performance‑enhancing drugs and argued that if cannabis use warranted sanction, alcohol should be treated similarly given how heavy drinking was common yet less harshly judged,” the paper says.
“Normalizing alcohol while stigmatizing cannabis creates confusion and erodes trust, even as informal conversations suggest movement toward more open dialogue.”
But despite the ongoing stigma, “many athletes report positive, often discreet social environments around cannabis use,” the authors wrote, pointing specifically to “teams or regions with legal markets.”
Another major theme that emerged from the interviews highlights athletes’ desires to receive more accurate and unbiased cannabis education from team and league health officials.
“Participants reported that the limited education they received from teams or governing bodies was largely 1‑sided, focused on negative effects and rarely clarified the rationale for cannabis rules, leading them to question why alcohol was permitted while cannabis remained prohibited,” the study says.
As a result, many athletes rely on their peers and the internet to obtain information about cannabis, “with limited formal guidance,” it says.
The researchers highlighted several key takeaway lessons:
“First, cannabis education tailored to athletes and sports medicine. Second, policies should be harmonized across leagues and grounded in emerging evidence, with clear communication. Third, organizations should foster open, nonjudgmental communication between athletes and medical staff. Fourth, leagues should reduce stigma surrounding cannabis use in sport. Finally, professional leagues should support further research on cannabis effects on athletic wellness, performance, and long-term health outcomes.”
“This study highlights the complex relationship between professional athletes and cannabis use in professional and college-level contact sports. It shows growing interest in cannabinoid products and the importance of addressing this safely and appropriately in athletics,” the paper concludes. “The substantial stigma and lack of knowledge among medical personnel working with these athletes underscores the need for improved education, communication, and evidence-based policies to protect athlete health in an evolving legal and commercial cannabis landscape.”
The researchers behind the new study previously published research in 2024 that highlighted the growing acceptability of medical cannabis in sports, while also underscoring the obstacles to marijuana research caused by ongoing federal prohibition.
NFL and the league’s players union in recent years have put a focus on funding research related to cannabis and athletes.
In 2022, for example, they authorized $1 million in grants for a pair of studies looking into the efficacy of marijuana and its components in managing football players’ pain and providing neuroprotection from concussions.
The league and the players union also awarded funding to support research on the therapeutic benefits of CBD as a pain treatment alternative to opioids for players with concussions.
The NFL reached an agreement with its players union in 2024 to further reform its marijuana policies, significantly reducing fines for positive tests while increasing the allowable THC threshold for players. About four years after NFL ended the practice of suspending players over cannabis or other drugs as part of a collective bargaining agreement, the league again revised its Substances of Abuse Policy and Performance Enhancing Substances Policy.
NBA, for its part, removed marijuana from the banned substances list for players in 2023, and it also freed them up to invest in and promote cannabis companies.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 2024 voted to remove marijuana from its banned substances list for Division I players.
The reform builds on a 2022 change that increased the allowable THC threshold for college athletes, aligning NCAA’s rules with those of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
The head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) blasted the “unfair” ban on marijuana for athletes competing in international sport events, including the Olympics that were underway in Paris at the time of the comments.
USADA CEO Travis Tygart said it was “disappointing” that WADA has maintained the cannabis prohibition based on what he considers a misguided justification.
WADA did carry out a review into its marijuana policy at the request of USADA and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) following the controversial suspension of U.S. runner Sha’Carri Richardson, who was barred from participating in the Olympics in 2021 after she tested positive for THC. Richardson said she used cannabis to cope with the recent passing of her mother.
While UFC announced in late 2023 that it was formally removing marijuana from its modified banned substances list for athletes, the league notified participants that the reform didn’t apply under California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) rules. UFC advised fighters that they could be subject to a $100 fine by CSAS if they tested over 150 nanograms of THC per milliliter ahead of the UFC 298 event that took place in February.
