The NFL is funding $500,000 for a research project in Canada, and the head of the team is a University of Regina professor who is investigating the use of cannabis compounds in the treatment of concussions and for pain management.
Dr. Patrick Neary explains that CBD is an anti-inflammatory, and THC helps with pain management, so the idea is to come up with the optimal formulation of these two to see what works best to either prevent or mitigate concussions, and to reduce the amount of prescription pain medications people are taking.
He hopes to have a formulation ready for the next football season, at which time players from the University of Regina Rams, the USask Huskies, the Saskatoon Hilltops, the Regina Thunder and the Okanagan Suns will take the medication on a daily basis for half the season and a placebo for the other half.
Then, the next part of the three year project, Neary says, is to test on former football and rugby players to see if it helps with chronic pain.

Neary says he is humbled by the experience, with the NFL choosing his project out of 106 applications.
It’s a multidisciplinary team, with researchers from the U of R, USask and the University of British Columbia.
NFL Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Allen Sills, says, “As with the league’s broader approach to health and safety, we want to ensure that our players are receiving care that reflects the most up-to-date medical consensus. While the burden of proof is high for NFL players who want to understand the impact of any medical decision on their performance, we are grateful that we have the opportunity fund these scientifically-sound studies on the use of cannabinoid’s that may lead to the discovery of data-based evidence that could impact the pain management of our players.