Browsing: Stoned Sports

Hiring a retired athlete to push hemp products has gone from a trend to simply the way things are done in the emerging CBD industry. Now a Colorado CBD company has lured an NBA legend to do more than that.

Earlier this month, Hall of Fame basketball player Isiah Thomas (not to be confused with former Denver Nuggets guard Isaiah Thomas) announced that he had acquired a partnership in VESL Oils, a CBD product manufacturer based in Arvada.

Society has a complicated and sometimes conflicted relationship with professional athletes, but if there’s anything about jocks that we all want to emulate, it’s those hot, chiseled bods.

Our opportunities to gain those physiques traditionally have started with buying shoes or training equipment endorsed by current all-stars, but now retired athletes have entered the fray, pushing everything from oddly shaped sneakers to copper-infused bracelets. I grew up knowing Chicago White Sox slugger Frank Thomas as the Big Hurt, a mountain of a man who yawned while jacking dingers across Lake Michigan. Today younger generations know him more for his big dick, jacking wives from their husbands in a Nugenix commercial.

Retired athletes recently found one more honey hole for their spokesperson services, as hemp and marijuana become more mainstream. Ex-NBA or NFL players opening weed dispensaries or starting infused products brands are actually nothing new — Cliff Robertson, Floyd Landis, LenDale White and Al Harrington have all founded cannabis companies or dabbled in partnerships with the industry, and lesser-known retired players have made a career out of advocating cannabis use, hitting the talk-show and conference circuit for speaking gigs — but those opportunities pale in comparison with what the CBD industry is offering right now.

Calling all retired jocks: cannabis doctors want you try out CBD.

Cannabis Clinicians Colorado, a group of healthcare professionals dedicated to studying medical marijuana, is recruiting sixteen retired athletes to participate in a study to see how using CBD affects qualities of life such as sleep and chronic pain.

Former athletes who have played collegiate or professional sports can sign up for a screening to see if they qualify to become CBD guinea pigs, testing how certain CBD products and dosages affect their overall health.

A group of Colorado researchers recently studied how cannabis use affects athletes and found a possible role between the plant and pain management.

The study, “Cannabis use in active athletes: Behaviors related to subjective effects,” looked at cannabis use patterns and its effects in a community-based sample of adult athletes. According to the study’s authors, there had been no previous academic research done on cannabis use’s subjective effects for adult athletes.

The National Football League recently announced that it will form two new committees with the NFL Players Association to address pain management and mental health, and rumors are circulating that the league’s current ban on cannabis could be reconsidered. But athletes have been using medical marijuana for pain and stress management for decades, often risking their livelihoods to avoid opioids and alcohol. Former Pro Bowl running back Reuben Droughns, for example, says he used cannabis throughout his career, but only refers to the plant as “medicine.”

Westword recently caught up with Droughns, who played three seasons for the Denver Broncos, to learn more about the NFL’s upcoming committees and the current climate of cannabis use in the NFL.

Are stoners lazy? Not according to a recent University of Colorado Boulder study that questions the “lazy stoner” stereotype. Overseen by Angela Bryan, a professor in CU Boulder’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, as well as the Institute for Cognitive Science, the study looked at a possible link between cannabis use and exercise behaviors.

“If we think about the typical ways you think of cannabis, it’s making you more relaxed and maybe not as motivated to get out of the house, and as an exercise researcher, that’s concerning,” says Bryan. “On the other hand, there’s some really good longitudinal data that shows that long-term cannabis users have lower weight, lower risk of diabetes, better waist-to-hip ratio, and better insulin function. It’s kind of a scientific quandary, so we thought we should do investigations to see whether there really is a problem that might be happening, or if cannabis could even be a benefit to physical activity.”

Former Denver Broncos running back Terrell Davis knows a thing or two about pain and injury. The Pro Football Hall of Famer was on his way to becoming one of the game’s greatest of all time when major knee injuries derailed his career — but not before he racked up nearly 9,000 overall yards, 65 touchdowns and plenty of hits.

Davis says he would’ve been able to suit up longer if he’d been allowed to take CBD during his playing days. And now the three-time All-Pro running back is pushing the cannabinoid after partnering with Defy, a CBD-infused sports drink.

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