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With Super Bowl LVII fast approaching, the NFL is wrapping up yet another season with fans, athletes, and medical professionals focused on concussions, and increasingly on cannabis as a tool for treating brain injuries and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a related neurodegenerative disease known mostly by its acronym CTE.

Players advocating for cannabis use in the NFL is not new. In 2015, Bleacher Report reported that while cannabis was banned from the NFL, it was still widely used by NFL players and “coveted” as an “invaluable painkiller.” 

Then researchers began diagnosing the life-crippling disease CTE in the vast majority of brains donated by deceased American football players. More recently, it was discovered that the “odds of CTE double every 2.6 years of football played.” 

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Consequently, while easing pain has been a primary focus of medical cannabis research, concussion treatment is fast climbing the list of concerns. This season’s watershed moment for another concussion-related rules change came in September when Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was stretchered off the field after suffering a concussion.

The logic behind exploring the connection between cannabis and concussions — simply put, though you can read a more thorough exploration in this recent research article — is based on evidence that concussions…