Former Lions star Calvin Johnson and longtime teammate Rob Sims appeared as panelists at the Cannabis Capital Conference in Toronto recently, advocating for more lenient laws and widespread usage of marijuana and its derivatives for pain relief and management.
Johnson left the Lions after nine seasons with mangled fingers and ankle, back and knee issues. At the conference, the franchise’s all-time leading wide receiver said it was actually during his stint on “Dancing With the Stars” when the pain became so unmanageable that he turned to cannabis-based relief.
“When I was on the dancing show, I was using a CBD topical that my buddy gave me because my ankles were swelling up so much that I didn’t think I would be able to finish the show,” Johnson said via the Detroit Free Press. “The relief happened almost overnight. I was already open-minded to marijuana, but after that, I became a true believer just because of the experience.”
Johnson and Sims, a former guard who played for the Lions for five of his nine NFL seasons, are hoping to break into the newly opened legalized marijuana market in Michigan. Johnson was preapproved for one of the licenses but did not get one in the first round of distribution.
There is a compelling argument to be made for allowing athletes to use marijuana and cannabidiol, or CBD, derivatives for pain relief purposes in lieu of using opioids, a point Sims and others hammered home during the conference.
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