Medical study gives athletes all the rationale they need to smoke marijuana

Here’s some terrific scientific news for you pro athletes.

According to a study released Tuesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association, smoking a marijuana cigarette (joint, blunt, bud, spliff, reefer, dope, herb, Li’l Weezy’s Best Friend) about once a week doesn’t hurt your lungs.

Imagine!

So when you’re driving and you’re pulled over by the cops in your smoke-filled Escalade, all you have to do is make sure at least one of your ‘‘cousins” in the vehicle will take the fall.

Also, you’re going to have to choose which night of the week you’re ‘‘firin’ up.” Will it be after the Knicks game? The Dodgers game? The Cowboys game?

Nothing is ever easy.

◆ ACTUALLY, THE BEST WAY to pass the bud – excuse me, buck – when caught with what is, remember, still an illegal drug might be to do what Oregon cornerback Cliff Harris did when a cop stopped him for going 118 mph in a leased car and asked: ‘‘Who’s got the marijuana in the car?”

Replied Harris, who had Ducks quarterback Darron Thomas among his passengers: ‘‘We smoked it all.”

◆ THE COLLEGE BOWL SEASON. Is it over?

I think it is. But even if the Pure Brass Spittoon Bowl has yet to be played, I already have my favorite postseason player.

He is BCS champion quarterback Anthony McCarron of Alabama, who, in the post-victory interview chaos, thanked the Crimson Tide scout team for working so hard to give the starters such a good representation of LSU’s offense and defense. He saluted the practice guys ‘‘who don’t show up in the newspapers.”

I love your generosity, Anthony. And now those guys have shown up in a newspaper.

◆ DO YOU UNDERSTAND the ‘‘instigator rule” in the NHL?

Forget that ritualized fighting on the ice is so primitive and appears so bizarre to most civilized people that it’s hard to fathom how it is a legal part of any game. Yet, if it is legal, how about the instigator rule, which proclaims you may not move too far to start a fight, even with a willing and opposing thug?

Further, it is considered unsportsmanlike – and penalty-worthy – to start a brawl while wearing a face shield. The logic seems to be that if you can gouge out his eyeball, he has to have the chance to gouge out your eyeball. Why goons don’t strip down to the waist and use short swords, I’m not sure.

◆ I KNOW, I KNOW. Fighting in hockey is how players enforce their code on the ice.

And no manly hockey player cares about what his face looks like – or even if he suffers a head injury that might leave him demented and drooling into a cup when he’s a senior citizen.

But imagine other sports allowing their players to ‘‘correct” perceived dirty play the refs didn’t catch. How well did it go when Kermit Washington punched Rudy Tomjanovich in an NBA game and nearly killed him?

How about when Albert Haynesworth kicked off Andre Gurode’s helmet during an NFL game and stomped on his face to the tune of 30 stitches?

There are enough hard surfaces, razor-sharp blades, swinging sticks and flying pellets in the NHL to make it as dangerous a game as any need be.

I worry about young, team-oriented ‘‘enforcers” such as Blackhawks rookie Andrew Shaw, a man who has to show how brutal he can be on the ice to please coach Joel Quenneville, general manager Stan Bowman and, of course, the watchful non-goons on the Hawks.

After his initial fight in his first game a week ago, Shaw – stitches still bloody above his left eye – said: ‘‘It was great to get the first one out of the way.”

Like your first kiss. Or wisdom tooth.

◆ CONCUSSIONS COME with fighting, but they also come with simple contact.

In the NHL, Islanders goalie Rick DiPietro once suffered a concussion from being hit in the mask with a puck.

In the NFL, Browns quarterback Colt McCoy was knocked out by a helmet-to-helmet hit from Steelers linebacker James Harrison. The resulting concussion put him among at least 11 Browns who suffered head injuries in their 4-12 season.

Why is it ‘‘at least 11” players? Because we don’t know the real number. Because players don’t tell doctors or trainers everything. Because if you come out of a game for getting your ‘‘bell rung,” you might get cut for being a wuss.

And because, to this day, we still don’t know all the symptoms of a concussion or how to describe the ones we do know to athletes.

I would bet that, by some fair standards, at least half of all NFL players suffer concussions every season.

Hockey? Even more?