News » Medical Marijuana: The Minnesota Vikings and Percy Harvin’s Sword of Damocles





The Minnesota Vikings have a wide receiver named Percy Harvin. They spent $1.04 million dollars to get him on the team. The problem is that the NFL doesn’t allow marijuana use, even for medical conditions where it’s allowed, and Harvin suffers from migraines. Until his career at the Vikings started, he’d used marijuana to control those migraines and otherwise live a normal life.

Now he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.

The Vikings took him on under the condition that his marijuana use would stop. He complied and had a good first season, right up to the end when the migraines came back with a vengeance. Since then, he’s been in and out of the hospital on various therapies and drugs, none of which have worked.

Last week, at the Vikings training camp, freshly returned from the hospital, he collapsed on the field during training. According to accounts, he looked up to track and receive a punt, froze in place, vomited, and then collapsed and became unresponsive. He was taken off the field by ambulance and the rest of practice was canceled as the other players were horrified.

Yet Harvin has a proven history of using marijuana to control his ailment. He’s shown, by his ability to get into the NFL, that his marijuana use and its control of his migraines was not slowing down or changing his game.

Despite this, he’s not allowed to use the one thing that’s been proven to work for him. Why?

Because marijuana laws in the U.S. are shamefully mismatched and insensible.

[source Opposing Views]

Tags: medical, Minnesota, Minnesota Vikings, Percy Harvins