How did the op-ed influence NFL policy?

It is widely cited as a catalyst for the Joint Pain Management Committee created by the March 2020 NFL-NFLPA collective-bargaining agreement. The PMC, co-chaired by Dr. Kevin Hill and Dr. Thom Mayer, subsequently funded research at UC San Diego, the University of Regina, ASPN, and Emory.

What did Monroe do after the NFL?

Monroe is a co-founder of Athletes for CARE (founded 2017 with Marvin Washington, Riley Cote, Cliff Robinson and others) — the largest U.S. athlete-led cannabis-policy advocacy organisation, which provides mental-health and harm-reduction resources for active and retired athletes.

Eugene Monroe 2016 Op-Ed: First Active NFLer to Call for Reform

Q: When did Eugene Monroe publish "Getting Off the T Train"?

May 23, 2016 in The Players' Tribune. It was the first op-ed by an active NFL player to publicly call for the league to remove cannabis from testing and address opioid dependence in the player population.

Q: What did Monroe argue?

Monroe wrote that "the NFL relies heavily on opioids to get players back on the field as soon as possible, but studies have shown medical marijuana to be a much better solution; it is safer, less addictive and can even reduce opioid dependence." He framed cannabis-policy reform as an opioid-harm-reduction issue, not a recreational-use issue.

Eugene Monroe's May 23, 2016 *Players' Tribune* op-ed "Getting Off the T Train" — the first by an active NFL player to publicly call for the league to remove cannabis from testing and address opioid dependence.

May 23, 2016: The Players' Tribune Op-Ed

On May 23, 2016, Baltimore Ravens left tackle Eugene Monroe published "Getting Off the T Train" in The Players' Tribune. The piece was, in two specific ways, a precedent: it was the first op-ed by an active NFL player to publicly call for the league to remove cannabis from testing, and it explicitly framed the question as one of opioid harm reduction rather than personal recreational use.

The Argument, in Monroe's Words

The throughline argument Monroe made — quoted in League and policy coverage since — was direct:

"the NFL relies heavily on opioids to get players back on the field as soon as possible, but studies have shown medical marijuana to be a much better solution; it is safer, less addictive and can even reduce opioid dependence."

The framing turned the cannabis-policy question from "should the league tolerate recreational use?" into "should the league continue prescribing the more dangerous of two pain-management options?" That reframing — opioid-substitution rather than recreational-tolerance — is the argument that the Joint Pain Management Committee, the league's research awards, and the broader alumni-advocacy ecosystem subsequently took up.

Why "Active" Made the Difference

Cannabis advocacy from retired NFL players had a long lineage by 2016: post-career voices like Randy Moss, Marvin Washington, and Kyle Turley. The argument from a currently rostered player carried a different weight. Monroe was on a Baltimore Ravens contract at the time of publication. The op-ed accepted a non-trivial risk that league reaction would shorten his career — and Monroe was released by the Ravens in June 2016, with widely reported attribution of the timing to the op-ed.

Monroe retired from the NFL shortly afterward, citing concussion concerns. The case sits in the policy record as a deliberate trade: a player chose to spend remaining career capital on advocacy. The trade is part of why the op-ed lands the way it does in subsequent CBA history.

Catalyst for the Joint Pain Management Committee

The March 2020 NFL-NFLPA CBA created the Joint Pain Management Committee, co-chaired by Dr. Kevin Hill (Director of Addiction Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess; Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School) and on the NFLPA side by Dr. Thom Mayer. The PMC's 2021 RFP drew 106 submissions. On February 1, 2022, the NFL announced $1 million in awards split between UC San Diego's Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (Drs. Mark Wallace and Thomas Marcotte, vaporised cannabis for soft-tissue injury pain) and the University of Regina (Dr. Patrick Neary, cannabinoids for concussion neuroprotection). A second round (announced 2023) funded ASPN (CBD plus non-invasive vagal-nerve stimulation for concussion) and Emory (mindfulness-based interventions). The Monroe op-ed is widely cited in trade-press history of the PMC's creation.

Athletes for CARE

In 2017, Monroe was a co-founder of Athletes for CARE alongside Marvin Washington, Riley Cote, Cliff Robinson, and others. Athletes for CARE is the largest U.S. athlete-led cannabis-policy advocacy group; it provides mental-health and harm-reduction resources for active and retired athletes, and operates in the same ecosystem as Doctors for Cannabis Regulation. See Advocacy Organisations for the full directory.

The CBA Throughline

The Monroe op-ed sits alongside the Williams and Gordon cases as one of the documented inflection points feeding into the March 2020 NFL-NFLPA CBA reform. Williams and Gordon supplied the suspension-cost evidence; Monroe supplied the active-player public framing. Together they made the case the league office and the players' association could no longer easily dismiss: that cannabis discipline imposed costs disproportionate to demonstrated risk, on a substance that — in opioid-comparator framing — might be the safer alternative for chronic injury management.

The Op-Ed That Started a Decade of Reform

Of the fourteen cases catalogued in our master ledger, Monroe's is one of the only ones that was not a test result, a suspension, or a detention. It is an op-ed. That an 800-word essay published in May 2016 sits in the same ledger as Rebagliati's stripped medal, Phelps's bong photograph, and Richardson's Olympic Trials suspension is a measure of how much the policy story turned, finally, on what active players were willing to say in public.