Steroid use in high school

Are high school athletes ramping up or slowing down their use of performance enhancing drugs? Unfortunately, according to studies reported by the Associated Press, the answer is a., usage is going up. More students than ever are turning to the substances, both legal and illegal.

According to data from the 2001 Monitoring the Future survey of drug use, 3.7 percent of high school seniors said they had used steroids in the past. The year before, the number was 2.5 percent. Not only was use going up, but fewer students thought using steroids was a bad thing, the survey found -- just under 70 percent disapproved of steroid use, but that number was nearly 90 percent the year before.

Meanwhile, Gary Green, a doctor and researcher at UCLA, looked into a survey last year of NCAA athletes and found that almost half the college athletes who reported that they used steroids said they brought the habit with them from high school. When the same question was asked in the survey 4 years earlier, only one-quarter of them said they had started using steroids in high school.

Read how steroids affect your body and how to recognize signs of steriod use at this Tips for Teens page.

January 26, 2002

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