Turning the NFL's pot problem into a profit center
Marijuana Policy Project
In September 2013, the Marijuana Policy Project, a pro-legalization group, placed a billboard outside Denver's Sports Authority Field at Mile High, calling on the league to stop punishing players for using pot. (MPP / McClatchy-Tribune)
Steve Rosenbloom   Steve RosenbloomContact Reporter
The RosenBlog
This Week In Pot: After Sports Authority filed for bankruptcy, the Broncos began looking for a new sponsor for Mile High Stadium, and you know who stepped up?

A couple marijuana companies in Colorado, that’s who. The two companies running dispensaries in a state where recreational pot is legal have reportedly offered $6 million per year. The dude abides.

Last Week In Pot: Someone is trying to open a marijuana-friendly gym in San Francisco, and that someone is Ricky Williams, natch, the three-time violator of the NFL’s drug policy.

These weekly adventures in pot are set against a league that wants players addicted to opioids so they can play the games each week instead of the medicinally safer pot that would allow players to survive the game’s after-effects all week.

I think the NFL is missing a play. A big money play. Take the cash being spent to phony up research on the brain damage caused by football and put it into lobbying legislators into making recreational pot legal nationwide, then slap an NFL license on it.

If a couple Colorado dispensaries each can offer $6 million for one-year’s naming rights, then you can imagine the kind of cash being generated. The NFL likes cash. The NFL knows how to suck up all the cash in the room. Here’s another chance to do just that.

If the NFL can market hats, jerseys, socks -- anything and everything -- then I think we can easily imagine NFL-licensed weed, complete with team names and team colors.

Just look at the varieties offered by Denver dispensary Native Roots, one of the naming rights bidders. A Yelp reviewer suggests getting there "well before closing because the place gets a little overwhelming."


Native Roots offers 30 varieties of flower-based recreational pot choices alone, and then there are the edibles, topicals, waxes, just to name a few things on the menu. So, how tough could it be to turn Blue Dream into Chicago Bears? You have half the team colors right there.

Doesn’t East Coast Alien scream to be grown into Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots?

And if we’re talking about a gimme: The Browns were made for the indica strain called Trainwreck.

See how easy this would be? And I think we all know how popular it would be. It would be the longest line in the stadium because fans would forget to go to the bathroom.

I could make a joke about a “Puff, Pass and Puff Competition’’ or suggest that Laremy Tunsil is way ahead on the merchandise endorsement, but I see this as a major revenue stream just waiting for lobbying to turn it into the law of the land.

Remember, we’re dealing with a league known for its negotiable virtue. Most recently, the NFL suddenly and amazingly, if not also hypocritically, dropped its concerns about gambling once Las Vegas and Nevada officials indicated they would build the Raiders a stadium.

Marijuana should be as legal as alcohol, and if the NFL is looking for soldiers to push that platform, then it has 32 rosters of uniformed, padded employees to deputize.

"Getting Off the T Train," a reference to Toradol, the painkiller teams shoot into players before every game every week. Monroe lobbied for the league to remove testing protocols for marijuana and called for the NFL to fund marijuana research "especially as it relates to the brain disease CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy)."


NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell takes questions during a news conference in New York in 2013. (Seth Wenig / AP)
Monroe presents a strong and reasoned case. An obvious case -- obvious even to some of those running the NFL -– by asking this question:

“How can a league so casual about the use of opioids take such a hard line on a drug that might provide a safer alternative?’’

The NFL doesn’t often seem to want to do the right thing just because it’s the right thing. It often seems to want to do what its wealthy owners want to do, which is usually to become wealthier.

So here’s a way to do something that’s right and revenue producing. If I’m the NFL, I stop trying to rig concussion research and start trying to profit off the treatment.

An iconic Melbourne precinct has reduced its waste by 90 per cent by tapping into a whole new industry - recycling food waste.

Two-and-a-half tonnes of food scraps from 90 businesses in the Degraves Street area are dehydrated and turned into fertiliser each week, which is then spread on parks and gardens throughout the city.

"The reason we're doing this is obviously to clean our laneways up, but the bigger picture is 250,000 tonnes of organic waste every year goes into landfill - that's enough to fill Eureka Tower to the top," said councillor Aaron Wood from the City of Melbourne.

The recycling program costs the City of Melbourne $300,000 annually and provides employment for seven workers.

"What we've seen immediately is a clean-up of the laneways, so that's an amenity issue," said councillor Wood.

"We've also had a 40 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions."....
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-03/recycling-food-waste-melbourne-precinct/7474714