Pro-Marijuana Group's Billboards Tackle NFL Drug Policy
NEWARK, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- Some pro-marijuana billboards are popping up along New Jersey highways -- and they're taking aim at the NFL in the days before Super Bowl XLVIII is played at the Meadowlands.
As WCBS 880's Jim Smith reported, one of the five billboards reads: "MARIJUANA: Safer than alcohol...and football."
Morgan Fox, a spokesman with the Marijuana Policy Project, which purchased the signs, said the 60-foot-wide digital billboards highlight what the group feels is the hypocrisy of the NFL with its beer sponsors.
"The same organization has no problem actively advertising a much more dangerous substance, particularly in a relatively family environment," Fox said.
The Marijuana Policy Project is calling on the NFL to stop punishing players for using pot, especially for medicinal purposes.
With the two Super Bowl teams hailing from Seattle and Denver, Fox said it was the perfect stage to spread the group's message.
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"These are two teams that both come from states that have just made marijuana legal for adults and are taxing it and regulating it similarly to alcohol," Fox said, adding that players cannot partake.
The billboards are located on I-78 near the New Jersey Turnpike toll plaza in Newark; on I-495 leading to the Lincoln Tunnel west of Routes 1 and 9 in North Bergen; on I-80 east off the turnpike in Teaneck; and two are located on the Garden State Parkway near the Raritan toll plaza north of Sayreville.
Four of the signs argue that marijuana is safer than alcohol -- and two of those also say it's safer than football. Another billboard, made to look like a scoreboard, says that there were nearly as many people arrested for marijuana in 2012 (749,824) as have attended the last 10 Super Bowls combined (751,203).
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Last week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told USA Today the league would consider letting players use medical marijuana in an effort to treat concussions and head injuries if it were deemed necessary.
"I'm not a medical expert," Goodell told the newspaper. "We will obviously follow signs. We will follow medicine, and if they determine this could be a proper usage in any context, we will consider that. Our medical experts are not saying that right now."
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