NHL Alumni Association is “All-In” on Cannabis Research

[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]T[/dropcap]he NHL Alumni Association is ready to look at cannabis as an effective way to treat pain and as a replacement for opioid-based painkillers.

Glenn Healy, former goaltender and current executive director of the alumni association, said he’s spent the last 10 months looking at cannabis and determining whether or not cannabis can help former players. Healy didn’t fully endorse cannabis, but said if science can prove its effectiveness in treating pain, then he and the alumni association are “all-in”

With legal recreational cannabis in Canada, many wondered how professional sports leagues would handle cannabis as the National Hockey League (NHL), National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball have teams that are based in Canada. Canada has seven NHL teams and also has teams in several U.S. states that have legal recreational cannabis. Many current and former players have called for more research into the medicinal properties of cannabis.

“You’d be stupid not to at least look into it,” Edmonton Oilers Captain Connor McDavid said prior to legalization in Canada. “When your body’s sore like it is sometimes, you don’t want to be taking pain stuff and taking Advil all the time. There’s obviously better ways to do it. You’re seeing a lot of smart guys look into it. You’re seeing a lot of really smart doctors look into it.”

Former NHL player Riley Cote has become an unofficial spokesperson for legal cannabis in the NHL. After retiring from professional hockey, Cote co-founded Athletes or Care, a group that advocates for athletes on various health matters, including the use of cannabis as medicine. Cote also founded the Hemp Heals Foundation, an organization that promotes sustainable agriculture, health and clean natural medicine. A former Philadelphia Flyer, Cote is now on the board of the Pennsylvania Hemp Industry Council.

The NHL and the NHL Players Association currently have no plans to change their current drug testing policy, which doesn’t punish players for positive cannabis tests. The NHL has the most lenient approach to cannabis in any of the major North American professional sports leagues. The NFL and NBA can suspend players for having multiple cannabis infractions, but only a significantly high amount of cannabis found during an NHL drug test will cause a referral to behavioral health doctors.