For a league that has no qualms feeding its players a steady diet of Vicodin, Percocet, and other painkillers, it seems disingenuous—if not outright hypocritical—that the NFL continues to ban the use of marijuana.

But a group of former players are hoping to change that. They’re lobbying the league to remove pot from the NFL’s banned substances list in order to allow players to use medical marijuana to alleviate the pain caused from such a physically punishing sport, according to an article in The Guardian that was shared in the News community by Reddit user sunnieskye1.

The reasons behind the push are two-fold: First, NFL players—current and former—are more likely to abuse prescription painkillers after using them to help with injuries, according to the article, which cites a 2011 study. And second, about half of the players in the league, the article estimates, already toke up to lessen the pain and discomfort that accumulates during a season—and a career—of continual pummeling by other 350-plus pound men.

While the NFL recently has increased the permitted threshold and lessened the penalty for testing positive for weed, that doesn’t mean it’s closer to letting players chill in the locker room after a game with a bottle of Gatorade and some OG Kush. The league, like any pro sport, is image conscious, and currently, the poster boy for prodigious player pot use also is a convicted murderer.

The NFL tests players for marijuana once a year during the preseason (more frequently for players who have tested positive in the past). Some believe league officials accept the fact that players will always smoke pot but use the testing as a “nudge, nudge, say no more” way to see if those same players can work within the NFL’s system of rules. Hey, it’s OK to get high, just don’t get caught.

There might be another, competitive reason to keep pot on the do-not-use list. Currently, only 23 states and the District of Columbia allow residents to use pot for medical and/or recreational purposes. That means players on 12 out of the NFL’s 32 teams would still be unable to to legally use marijuana for medicinal purposes even if the league lifted its ban.

Could that give the other 20 teams a leg up when it comes to recruiting talent? Absolutely, if it’s true that at least half the league are hitting the bong in order to self-medicate or just to have fun.

Whether competitive fairness is a convenient smokescreen or a legitimate league concern associated with the issue—or most likely, a little from Column A and a little from Column B—it does allow the NFL to avoid wading into a moral argument when it comes to maintaining a ban on marijuana.