In years past, marijuana and CBD was frowned upon within professional sports. Now, there’s been a slight paradigm shift societally – marijuana and CBD are becoming more socially acceptable.

Specifically, CBD is now legal within the NFL Players Association’s new labor agreement. This is huge news for professional football players and the CBD industry.

Hanover, Mass.-based Boston Hemp said in statement that it’s seeing professional athletes order CBD products on a regular basis. The company even sponsors a professional arena football team, the Massachusetts Pirates, and have numerous marketing agreements with professional athletes in various sports.

CBD is used for an abundance of reasons, but athletes are most commonly using it as a natural alternative for pain relief due to its theorized anti-inflammatory properties. Recently, sports fans were stunned when former Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ wide receiver Antonio Brown left his team during a game in what many deemed an unsportsmanlike display.

What isn’t generally not known, though, is that Brown had been injected with a pain reliever in his ankle in order to take the field for that Sunday’s football game against the New York Jets. Actions like this from a professional medical staff leave people wondering if there could be a better natural solution to avoid such drastic measures.

When Congress passed and President Trump signed the Farm Bill Act in 2018, it led to the legalization of not only hemp, but all its natural derivatives. Companies like Boston Hemp are offering an array of hemp-derived natural alternatives for their customer base. Delta-8 THC, CBD, CBG, THC-O and HHC are just a few of cannabinoids it offers that are legally extracted from the hemp plant.

Are these cannabinoids next to be accepted in the U.S. by professional sports leagues like the NFL?