Use of Drugs in College Athletics: Social Drugs

The most commonly used drugs among student-athletes are social drugs. Social drugs include marijuana, cocaine, spit tobacco, and synthetic marijuana.2 Additionally, alcohol and cigarettes are classified as social drugs but are not banned by the NCAA, with the exception of rifle competition in which alcohol is banned.1 Even though alcohol is not banned by the NCAA, individual institutions can ban alcohol and enforce punishments for the use of alcohol.

Patterns of Social Drug Use by Women's Sports

Alcohol is by far the most commonly used social drug by both men’s and women’s sports.2 The other social drugs vary in popularity from men’s sports to women’s sports. Currently among individual sports, lacrosse uses social drugs the most and basketball uses social drugs the least.2 Synthetic marijuana is used the least among men’s sports, but cocaine is used the least among women’s sports.2

When it comes to men’s sports, the use of marijuana has been slowly increasing in soccer, track, and wrestling.2 Soccer, as well as lacrosse, has seen an increase in the use of cocaine; lacrosse and swimming have had an increase in spit tobacco use.2 Additionally, the use of alcohol in swimming and track have been slowly increasing.2

Patterns of Social Drug Use by Men's Sports

Women’s sports have fewer student-athletes that use drugs and also have less widespread use of certain drugs. However, alcohol use has increased in women’s soccer, swimming, tennis, track, and volleyball.2 Marijuana usage has increased in women’s basketball and swimming, and spit tobacco use has increased in women’s track.2

Since 2005, the overall use of social drugs has stayed relatively the same, only fluctuating by a few percent.2 The greatest change in social drug use has been the decrease in cigarette and cocaine use by women, each being used half as much in 2013 as in 2005.2 Men’s sports have not seen significant decreases in social drug use, nor have they seen any significant increase in use.2 Knowledge of drug use patterns can be beneficial to administrative staff and coaching staff as it allows increases and decreases in usage to predict potential drug related problems that may arise in athletic programs. In both men’s and women’s sports, there are fluctuations in usage and historically the most common social drugs continue to be the most commonly used social drugs.2

Next week I will discuss ergogenic drugs and compare the usage of social drugs with ergogenic drugs.

References

1(2012, April 10). NCAA Banned Drug List [PDF document]. Retrieved from http://www.ncaa.com/content/ncaa-banned-drug-list

2Rexroat, M. (2014). NCAA National Study of Substance Use Habits of College Student-Athletes [PDF document]. Retrieved from http://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/file/Substance%20Use%20Final%20Report_FINAL.pdf