Ricky Williams comes out for pot

NFL star Ricky Williams has come forward to admit he is a cannabis consumer and that a third failed drug test was a greater factor in his decision to quit football after only five seasons than he had initially admitted. One can't really blame him for wanting to leave an employer that would dictate his private behavior.

Cannabis is not a chemical performance enhancing drug, it's a plant used in an unadulterated form as a relaxant and a pain reliever. Williams is said to have used the herb to help overcome his anxiety disorder because the pharmaceutical drug he was prescribed did not agree with him. As someone who used this plant to overcome the same malady, I can attest to its effectiveness. I was a painfully shy child and twenty five years ago, marijuana helped me overcome that disorder.

I see these headlines from sports writers calling him selfish and saying he has a "pot problem". I'm not often moved to this kind of language, but to that I say, screw you. Ricky has no obligation to surrender his personal sovereignty to give you guys something to talk about and what makes his pot use such a problem? That he was too good a player?

[He] led the NFL in 2002 with 1,853 yards rushing and broke nine team records. Last season he ran for 1,372 yards despite little offensive support.

Williams only problem with cannabis use that I can see is that our government would like to put him in prison for it and the NFL would continue to penalize him for using a natural medicine instead of a chemical like Paxil, for which he was a former spokesman.