Written by Des Bisler at WashingtonPost.com
Sometime soon, the NFL may have to explain in court how its team’s medical staffs responsibly dispensed painkillers to players in the league. According to Calvin Johnson, powerful and addictive opioids were, until recently, handed out “like candy.”
Johnson, who retired from the Lions in March after a stellar career, offered his thoughts on the lengths to which NFL players went to stay on the field in an interview with ESPN’s “E:60.”
[Archive: Pain and pain management in NFL spawn a culture of prescription drug use and abuse]
“I guess my first half of my career before they really, you know, before they started looking over the whole industry, or the whole NFL, the doctors, the team doctors and trainers, they were giving them out like candy, you know?” Johnson said in an on-camera interview that is scheduled to air first on Thursday.
“If you were hurting, then you could get them. It was nothing,” Johnson added. “I mean, if you needed Vicodin, call out, ‘My ankle hurt,’ you know. ‘I need, I need it. I can’t, I can’t play without it,’ or something like that. It was simple. That’s how easy it was to get them. So if you were dependent on them, they were readily available.”
More than 1,500 former NFL players, not including Johnson, have filed a class-action lawsuit against the NFL, one that a federal judge recently ruled could proceed to the discovery phase. The suit, which names each of the league’s 32 teams, alleges that doctors and trainers often distributed painkillers without examinations or prescriptions, and that players were deliberately misled about their dangerous side effects.
“I know where my body’s at, know how it feels,” Johnson, 30, told ESPN of his decision to retire, which surprised many, given that he was coming off of another effective season. He had 88 catches for 1,214 yards, 10th in the NFL, and nine touchdowns in 2015, plus his sixth Pro Bowl selection.
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