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By Perry Green, AFRO Sports Editor, [email protected]
More and more ex-NFL players are opening up about using marijuana during their playing careers.
Recently retired tight end Martellus Bennett told reporters just a week ago that he estimates about 89 percent of the NFL’s active players use marijuana, despite the drug currently being on the league’s banned substance list.
Bennett explained how players prefer marijuana to deal with the body pain they endure throughout the course of a season, instead of popping pills, according to USA Today.
“There are times of the year where your body just hurts so bad,” Bennett told USA Today. “You don’t want to be popping pills all the time. There are anti-inflammatory drugs you take so long that they start to eat at your liver, kidneys and things like that. A human made that. God made weed.”
Former Kansas City Chiefs defensive lineman Shaun Smith backed up Bennett’s comments this past weekend, saying that the majority of the league’s players use marijuana. Smith’s estimation wasn’t as high as Bennett’s – the former nine-year-veteran believes only about 80 percent of the NFL uses marijuana, but he did mention how it’s not just players who smoke weed.
“Shoot, the coaches do it,” Smith told Bleacher Report. “Personnel people upstairs do it. Quarterbacks that do it. Guys that are your captains, your leaders of the team that smoke.
Smith detailed how he would smoke right before games.
“Yeah, I had a little ritual: smoke two blunts before every game,” Smith told Bleacher Report. “When I smoke, I can focus and actually do the job that I have to do and the tasks. It’s like I’m in the zone. I feel like nobody can stop me when I was out there. It mellowed me out, got me going and it’s the best thing for me.”
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