Over the past few years, many athletes have been suspended for the use of weed. This one is for you Josh Gordon.

Randy Moss, Martavis Bryant, Le’Veon Bell, Von Miller, and LeGarrette Blount. What do all of them have in common, except for that they’re good at football? They all were suspended for use of marijuana.

Marijuana has been a hot topic around politics the past few years, with California, Alaska, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Massachusetts, and Maine voting to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. The entire country is shifting towards the legalization of marijuana, so why are sports not modernizing their rulebook? NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell simply has an archaic stance on marijuana.

“There are a lot of compounds in marijuana that may not be healthy for the players long-term.” Goodell said.

Science shows that alcohol has a worse effect on the human brain than marijuana does, but the NFL, NBA, and other major sporting groups allow their players to drink alcohol but do not allow the use of marijuana for pain or recreational uses. The NFL signed a $1.5 billion deal making Bud Light the official beer sponsor of the NFL through 2022. It is illogical to be so pro alcohol when it has been scientifically proven to be worse health wise than marijuana when the NFL’s reasoning for being against marijuana is the health effects.

The league wide pain suppressor in the NFL and NBA are opioids. According to a recent study done by Healthline, more people across the world are addicted to opioids than are marijuana. To make matters worse, 15,000 people died in the United States from opioid overdose in 2015. That’s 15,000 more than died from Marijuana overdose. One of the greatest receivers of all time, Calvin Johnson, who just recently retired told reporters that pain killers were handed out “like candy”. It does not make sense that a league so against marijuana is alright promoting the use opioids if the worry is player health.

Roger Goodell has been against legalizing marijuana ever since players and advisers have been advocating for allowing its use.“To date, they haven’t said this is a change we think you should make that’s in the best interests of the health and safety of our players. If they do, we’re certainly going to consider that. But to date, they haven’t really said that.”

Goodell claims he has people around him who are supposedly advising him but there is no way the people around him are at all qualified if they are allowing players to get addicted to opioids and continue to allow players to mess up their livers with alcohol.

Another issue with the NFL marijuana policy is the degree to which the players are punished. Players like Ray Rice and Greg Hardy received much more lenient punishments after they abused their fiance and girlfriend, respectively. Rice was suspended 2 games initially and eventually it was bumped up to a season after public backlash to the ruling. Hardy was suspended 10 games after hitting his girlfriend and carrying an illegal weapon. Then there is Martavis Bryant, who was suspended for an entire season after he was caught having marijuana in his system a third time.

It is true that third time offenders are clearly not getting the point and therefore should be punished more harshly. However, taking a player’s paycheck away for an entire year just because they use marijuana just like 52% of Americans over the age of 18 (NBC) is simply absurd. Banning players like Bryant for longer than people like Rice is ludicrous.

The NFL must develop their archaic views to match modern day governing. The NFL has much bigger things to worry about than urine tests of hard working athletes. Maybe if the $10 million currently being spent annually on marijuana testing was spent on making the game safer, then former players won’t keep dropping dead at 55.