Author: Harold Han
Cannabis and sport have always had a complicated relationship. For decades, the conversation went in one direction: athletes who used cannabis were risking their careers, their reputations, and their eligibility. The narrative was about prohibition, suspicion, and the threat of a positive test.
Today, that conversation has fundamentally changed. Athletes at every level are using cannabis, not to escape their sport, but to perform better in it and recover faster from it. The questions have shifted from whether athletes use cannabis to how they use it, what they are looking for, and whether it is actually working.
We took a deep dive into some recent surveys, human trials, and review studies to create an overview of the current landscape of how professional athletes use cannabis.
Active Professional Athletes: Managing the Body That Earns a Living
Professional athletes live in a world of extraordinary physical demand. They train at intensities that push the body close to its limits. They compete under pressure that few people outside the locker room can fully appreciate. And they do all of this inside one of the most regulated environments when it comes to substance use.
The regulatory landscape around cannabis in professional sport has been shifting for over a decade. WADA raised its THC threshold tenfold, from 15 ng/mL to 150 ng/mL, back in 2013 (source), effectively decriminalizing out-of-competition use for most athletes, and removed CBD from its Prohibited List entirely in 2019 (source). In American professional sport, the shift has gone further. MLB removed THC from its "drugs of abuse" list in 2020 (source), and the NFL stopped preseason THC testing in 2021. By 2024, the NFL had raised its positive-test threshold to 350 ng/mL and replaced suspensions with fines (source). The NCAA removed cannabis from its banned substances list for Division I competition entirely (source). THC remains prohibited in Olympic competition, and the CBD contamination risk is real. But the trend across every major governing body points the same way. Athletes are not waiting for the last rule to change; they are already adapting.
When active pro-athletes come to cannabis, they are not chasing the intoxicating effect from THC, but to find better tools to reduce or replace the reliance on NSAIDs like ibuprofen and naproxen, prescription sleep aids, and anxiety medications. The long-term risks of chronic NSAID use, including gastrointestinal damage and cardiovascular effects (Al-saeed 2011), are well understood in sports medicine. Cannabis, particularly CBD, offers pain and inflammation support without those known risks. For an athlete managing their body over the long arc of a career, that is a meaningful solution.
The most reliable current data on active pro-athletes comes from studies focused on CBD specifically, because CBD is the cannabinoid that professional athletes have the most freedom to discuss openly. A 2025 survey of elite-level Canadian athletes found that 38 percent had used CBD, with 30 percent of those reporting active current use (Karam et al., 2025). Their primary reasons were consistent: better sleep, reduced pain from training, and relaxation. Among professional rugby players, a separate survey of over 500 athletes found that 26 percent had used CBD, with 68 percent of those users reporting a perceived benefit (Kasper et al., 2020).
What those numbers do not fully capture is the broader cannabis use in professional sport, including THC, which athletes are far less likely to report, given the anti-doping stakes. Player-led estimates in high-collision leagues like the NFL and NBA have suggested actual weekly usage rates considerably higher than official figures, with some internal accounts pointing to 50 to 80 percent weekly use in certain locker rooms (source). Those numbers are hard to verify, but they reflect a real gap between what athletes say publicly and what actually happens privately.
Why Active Athletes Use Cannabis?
Among active professional athletes, the primary goals of using cannabis are pain management, recovery support, sleep improvement, and anxiety reduction. The physical demands of professional sport generate chronic pain that goes beyond what any conventional recovery protocol fully addresses. Cannabis, particularly CBD, has become a tool that fits into the spaces between official medical support and the athlete's own need to keep performing.
Sleep is especially significant at the elite level. Professional athletes know that sleep quality is one of the most powerful recovery variables. When competition schedules, travel, and the adrenaline of high-stakes performance all conspire against a good night's rest, many athletes have found that CBD, and for evening use, low-dose THC, helps them get the quality of sleep their bodies need.
What Type of Cannabis do Active Athletes Use?
From the public stance, the stated format preference among active professionals skews strongly toward CBD products, particularly oral tinctures, oils, and topicals. This is not primarily about a preference for the experience, but rather strict anti-doping compliance. Under WADA's current rules, cannabinoids—including THC—remain strictly prohibited in competition. While CBD itself is permitted, the contamination risk is a serious threat to an athlete's career: CBD products can contain trace amounts of THC, and even minuscule amounts can produce a positive test under strict liability rules. For instance, a Johns Hopkins study demonstrated that vaporizing CBD-dominant cannabis containing just small amounts of THC produced urine metabolite levels above confirmation thresholds in some participants (Spindle et al., 2019). Because of this, active professionals publicly emphasize using high-quality CBD isolates or broad-spectrum oils that allow for precise dosing and topical creams that carry essentially no systemic testing risk.
However, this CBD-centric narrative severely underrepresents the reality of cannabis use in sports. Off the record, THC is widely consumed by active athletes for both deep recovery and recreation. In fact, cluster analyses of active athletes reveal that strict "medical CBD-only" users are actually in the minority; over 75% of cannabis-using athletes intentionally consume a combination of THC and CBD to capture the synergistic benefits (source). Furthermore, despite concerns about lung capacity and respiratory health, smoking cannabis flower remains the most common method of consumption. Evening THC use is a widespread norm.
Former Professional Athletes: Recovery After the Career
When a professional career ends, the body does not forget what happened to it. Decades of high-impact training and competition leave a residue: chronic joint pain, neurological damage from head impacts, persistent sleep disruption, and, in many cases, a complicated relationship with the opioids and other medications that were used to keep athletes on the field.
Former professional athletes represent arguably the most compelling use case for cannabis-based support. The regulatory barriers disappear, the chronic pain burden is often severe, and the pharmaceutical history is frequently problematic. Research on former NFL players shows significant rates of opioid exposure and misuse risk, driven by the pain management demands of a career spent absorbing physical contact at extreme levels.
Why Former Pro Athletes Use Cannabis
The primary motivations for former professional athletes are pain management, sleep, and the replacement of pharmaceutical regimens that were begun during their playing days and have become burdensome or harmful in retirement. Cannabis, particularly full-spectrum products that combine THC and CBD, offers something that opioids do not: meaningful pain relief without the dependency spiral, the cognitive fog, or the mortality risk.
Former athletes who have transitioned to cannabis for chronic pain management report some of the highest satisfaction levels of any cannabis-using population. Studies and surveys in this group have shown that up to 60 percent of those who incorporate medical cannabis report significant reductions in opioid use. For a population that has carried a heavy pharmaceutical burden, that is not a minor finding.
Sleep is the second major driver. The combination of chronic pain, neurological effects from impact exposure, and the psychological adjustment of leaving a high-structure professional environment creates sleep disruption that persists for years after retirement. Cannabis, particularly THC-containing products used in the evening, addresses this more directly than CBD alone.
What Former Pro Athletes Consume and How
Unlike active professionals, former athletes are not constrained by anti-doping compliance. Their product choices reflect that freedom. Full-spectrum cannabis products that leverage the combined effects of THC and CBD are common in this group. The format preference skews toward edibles and capsules, which provide longer-lasting systemic relief suited to chronic pain management and sleep support. Topicals remain relevant for localized joint pain, and oil tinctures are quite popular.
The Bigger Picture
Professional athletes are among the most disciplined, most physically monitored, and most performance-oriented humans on the planet. They do not add things to their regimen casually. When they adopt cannabis at this scale, across sports, across countries, and across the active-to-retirement spectrum, they are telling us something important about what the plant actually does.
Cannabis is helping elite athletes manage pain without the dependency spiral of opioids. It supports sleep quality without the cognitive blunting of prescription sleep aids. It is reducing anxiety without the emotional flatness associated with pharmaceutical anxiolytics. And it is doing all of this while allowing athletes to remain functional, focused, and physically capable. That is a powerful signal about cannabis as a tool to improve human performance and human potential.
This is what phytoRX is built on. The science of what cannabis can do for professional athletes is still being written, but the effects of cannabis speak for themselves already. Our goal at phytoRX is to offer pro-athletes the plant-based healing with consistency, efficacy, and trust they deserve.
The shift has already happened. We are here to help it go further.
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phytoRX is a hemp-derived CBD and CBG beverage concentrate. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.