NFL Court Filings Show Team Abuse of Painkillers, Other Drugs

[jerrym]

Lawyers representing more than 1,800 NFL players in a lawsuit against each of the 32 NFL teams and their trainers and doctors over damages have unearthed documents showing that NFL teams regularly broke the law in the distribution of painkillers and other drugs to players. It also raises the question of what is happening in the CFL.

National Football League teams violated federal laws governing prescription drugs, disregarded guidance from the Drug Enforcement Administration on how to store, track, transport and distribute controlled substances, and plied their players with powerful painkillers and anti-inflammatories each season, according to sealed court documents contained in a federal lawsuit filed by former players. ...
Federal law lays out strict guidelines for how teams can handle and dispense prescription drugs. The sealed court filing, which includes testimony and documents by team and league medical personnel, describes multiple instances in which team and league officials were made aware of abuses, record-keeping problems and even violations of federal law and were either slow in responding or failed to comply.
The filing, which was prepared by lawyers for the players suing the league, asserts that “every doctor deposed so far . . . has testified that they violated one or more” federal drug laws and regulations “while serving in their capacity as a team doctor.” Anthony Yates, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ team doctor and past president of the NFL Physicians Society, testified in a deposition that “a majority of clubs as of 2010 had trainers controlling and handling prescription medications and controlled substances when they should not have,” the filing states. ...
The details and communications were unearthed by lawyers representing more than 1,800 former professional football players who are suing the league in U.S. District Court in Northern California, claiming they suffer long-term organ and joint damage, among other maladies, as a result of improper and deceptive drug distribution practices by NFL teams. ...
The court filing reveals that the teams dispensed painkillers and prescription-strength anti-inflammatories in numbers far beyond anything previously acknowledged or made public. In the calendar year of 2012, for example, the average team prescribed nearly 5,777 doses of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and 2,213 doses of controlled medications to its players, according to a March 2013 internal document from Lawrence Brown, the NFL-employed medical adviser who oversees its drug issues. ...

Those numbers could average out to about six to seven pain pills or injections a week per player over the course of a typical NFL season, but sports medicine experts noted that it’s unlikely the drugs were distributed evenly over the entire roster and just as unlikely that team logs represent the full extent of medications players seek out to manage pain.
“It sounds like an incredible amount of intervention with some pretty risky drugs, some of which, in the case of Vicodin, have a high addiction potential,” said Arthur Caplan, director of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center and co-founder of the NYU Sports and Society Program. “It makes you think, are the physicians looking out for the health of the players, or are they just trying to keep them on the field?” ...

The filing likens painkillers to performance-enhancing drugs and says while players often felt compelled to use them to contribute to their teams, medical staffs felt pressured to administer them to remain competitive. A February 2006 memo included in the court filing was from the Minnesota Vikings’ head trainer, Eric Sugarman. Writing to then-head coach Brad Childress and the team’s vice president for operations, the trainer said he had met for three hours with team physician David Fischer and lamented that the Vikings were not regularly using a powerful painkiller called Toradol, as other teams were.
“I expressed my concern that [the Vikings] are at a competitive disadvantage. . . . I feel very strongly about this point,” he wrote. “. . . I feel that Dr. Fischer is beginning to see my point of view on many issues. I also feel he is willing to change to improve.” ...
In their filing, the players’ lawyers cite multiple instances in which team executives and league officials were made aware of issues surrounding the handling of pain medication. League medical advisers Brown and Elliott Pellman communicated with team physicians on issues such as medication abuse and attended meetings of the NFL Physicians Society. For example, the complaint cites a 1998 meeting of the society in which Brown reported that during an audit, at least “5 teams were in noncompliance with controlled substances.” ...
The former players say the teams intentionally disregarded federal laws and openly acknowledged their compliance problems. In the complaint, lawyers say “numerous documents obtained during discovery show how Clubs and their doctors and trainers concealed their illegal activities for years.” ...
Federal law bars nonlicensed team personnel, such as athletic trainers, from dispensing medication. The complaint cites multiple instances in which clubs were warned about this practice, including letters from Brown to the Bengals, Kansas City Chiefs and Tennessee Titans.

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