Marijuana and Football, What Happens to Sports Performance When the Two Mix?

Earlier this month, an Ohio high school senior was suspended from his football team for a marijuana-related retweet. Amazingly, Jakob Neumann from Bellville Clear Fork High wasn’t pictured in the tweet and nor did he write the caption; he was simply one of 18 people who decided to retweet the piece below:

But was this justified and why can’t football and marijuana co-exist? For years cannabis has remained on the FA’s banned substance list along with more commonly known performance-enhancing drugs like steroids and amphetamines. But society’s view on the drug is changing and so is sport’s as a whole.

In 2012 Colorado’s Amendment 64 legalised its use making Denver the most weed-friendly place on earth, according to the Huffington Post. Plus, even the World Anti-Doping Agency has relaxed its marijuana policy, increasing the threshold for a positive test by tenfold in 2013.

So, if the legal and ethical reasons that once prohibited its use in football were abandoned, what would this mean for the beautiful game in terms of the players’ performance? Would rolling a pre-match joint turn players into creative, herbally enhanced versions of themselves, gifted with a psychological advantage?

Or would spectators witness their heroes lethargically dragging their legs up and down the pitch unable to string two passes together? Traditional sports scientists believe it’s the latter. However, modern-day sporting examples and new research beg to differ and believe the majority of studies have been hindered by old-fashioned political ideologies.                                                                                 

Firstly, let's consider an often-quoted clinical study that is repeatedly used in the marijuana debate which was conducted by the U.S Government on certified airplane pilots.

Published in The American Journal of Psychiatry (h/t europepmc.org), scientists monitored the pilot’s ability to operate a flight simulator 30 minutes after smoking active marijuana and compared it to a placebo group. What they found was marijuana negatively affected their ability to both think and react to the simulator concluding:

"

All pilots showed a significant decrease in measurements of flying performance 30 minutes after smoking active marijuana. The authors conclude that the effects of marijuana on flying performance may represent a sensitive indicator of the drug's psychomotor effects.

"

With over three million views, the video below from CNN News tests how a driver's ability is affected by marijuana and seems to support the research published by the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Scientists from the Biological Research Center in West Haven, CT, also believe the performance-hindering effects of cannabis aren’t just physically apparent either.

According to the Journal of Psychopharmacology (h/t springer.com), the chemical compounds found in marijuana, called cannabinoids, have been shown to act on cannabinoid receptors within the body and repress neurotransmitter release in the brain. Neurotransmitters are chemical signals that communicate information throughout the brain, and they believe:

"

Cannabinoids impair all stages of memory including encoding, consolidation, and retrieval and the inhibition of neurotransmitter (GABA, glutamate, acetyl choline, dopamine) release, have been implicated in the amnestic effects of cannabinoids.

"

But worth noting is the U.S. Government-supported pilot study mentioned before dates back to 1976, and since then, many leading experts have challenged the popular perceptions surrounding marijuana use.

No one is more outspoken than Professor Peter J. Cohen of the Georgetown University Law Center who serves as Vice Chair of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA's) Institutional Review Board.

The Institutional Review Board is responsible for ensuring that NIDA's clinical studies conform to the highest ethical standards, and it’s in his work published in the Journal of Pain and Palliative Care Pharmacotherapy (h/t informahealthcare.com), he claims that:

"

I will then propose that ability of scientists to conduct impartial studies designed to answer the question of marijuana's role in medical therapy has been greatly hampered by political considerations.

I will posit that in spite of the considerable efforts of policymakers, it is becoming apparent that marijuana's benefits should be weighed against its well-described risks.

"

Such benefits mentioned by Professor Cohen are then well-documented in a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. Researchers took 77 subjects, including those who had used marijuana previously, and monitored the psychiatric manifestations caused by the drug. They found the effects were comparable to alcohol and concluded:

"

It causes a lowering of inhibitions. ... The user may speak and act more freely and experiences a feeling of calm and pleasurable relaxation. 

There is no evidence to indicate that continued use of marijuana is a stepping-stone to the use of opiates. Prolonged use of the drug does not lead to physical, mental, or moral degeneration, nor is there any evidence of any permanent deleterious effects from its continued use.

Quite the contrary, marijuana and its derivatives and allied synthetics have potentially valuable therapeutic applications that merit future investigation.

"

Whilst we can’t be sure, who’s to say marijuana didn’t have a role to play when Ross Rebagliati’s won snowboarding's first Olympic gold medal at the 1998 Winter Games, only to later test positive for the drug as reported by USA Today. Is it possible marijuana enhanced his performance, relaxing him and giving him the confidence to do the following in this video?

Even in the sport of American football, it seems the illustrious career of former Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams may have been partly fuelled by the green herb, even before matches. Talking on WQAM radio in Miami, the former Dolphins linebacker Channing Crowder said:

"

Remember that Buffalo game, the 200-yard game? Smoked the night before. Talk to Ricky. He was doing it, that’s what he did. Him smoking weed, sitting at his house smoking weed, didn’t affect anybody but Ricky. He got high and then he sobered up and then he went to practice the next day.

"

Also to use a footballing example, it seems marijuana didn’t seem to hinder the performance of Musonda Mweuke. According to the BBC back in 2003, Mweuke was arrested by local drug enforcement officers and pleaded guilty in court to unlawfully using the drug, yet at the time he was also the top goalscorer in Zambia's domestic league.

So, based on the evidence, should the FA reconsider its anti-doping policy? The new wave of research and evidence suggests it probably should, and the banning of marijuana doesn’t appear to be as clear-cut as other performance-enhancing drugs such as steroids and amphetamines.

Granted its abuse could be detrimental to people’s health, and in no way was this article intended to make light of that. But abuse of anything can be bad; for instance, abusing chocolate wouldn’t exactly aid sports performance.

To echo the sentiments of Professor Cohen, the FA should consider “marijuana’s benefits against its well-described risks,” and at the very least, Neumann’s suspension should be reconsidered.

Follow @rossedgley