Drugs to enhance athletic performance in the adolescent.

Why would any athlete expose himself to these pharmacologic agents? The most obvious answer is to improve performance. Since athletic performance is composed of so many variables, for example, attitude, diligence in training, strength, agility, and the competitive spirit, it is difficult to ascribe improvement in performance to any particular agent. It may be due to the placebo effect or to better or more efficient training, to say nothing about the effects of the normal maturational process. Certainly the peer pressure of others using these agents weighs heavily upon the adolescent's mind. Might peers have a competitive advantage? All of these points would be moot if it were not for the ready availability of many of these compounds. All are within reach of the athlete with a little knowledge of this subculture, and all are relatively inexpensive (with the exception of GH). They can be as tempting to adolescents as are brightly colored packages of household cleaners, vitamins, or flavored children's aspirin tablets to toddlers. Continuing with this analogy, one notes that most of the time children easily recover from accidental ingestions, but these instances, just as with drugs of adolescent and adult abuse, can be deadly.