Travis Kelce estimates 50% to 80% of NFL players use cannabis
When Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce was playing college football at Cincinnati, he tested positive for marijuana and was suspended for the entire 2010 season. Laws and attitudes relating to marijuana have changed significantly since then, and few people think such a harsh punishment fits such a mild crime. And Kelce now says what he did as a college football player is something most pro football players do.
Kelce told Vanity Fair that around 50 percent to 80 percent of NFL players use cannabis, and that under the more lenient policy the NFL implemented in 2021, it’s easy for players to use marijuana in the offseason and stop before testing begins.
“If you just stop in the middle of July, you’re fine,” he said. “A lot of guys stop a week before and they still pass because everybody’s working out in the heat and sweating their tail off. Nobody’s really getting hit for it anymore .”
Still, Kelce doesn’t necessarily regret what happened to him in college, saying that because of the experience of having to sit out a season, “I found out how many people were in my corner.”
Chief among the people in his corner were his big brother Jason Kelce, who was then a Cincinnati teammate and is now the Eagles’ All-Pro center. Jason moved Travis into his house on campus the year Travis was suspended to personally oversee Travis and make sure he kept up with his classes and stayed in shape so that he’d be ready to return to the team in 2011, after Jason had moved on to the NFL.
Travis got his college career back on track, got drafted by the Chiefs, and can now view that suspension as only a blip in a long career.
Source: NBC Sports
