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 Researchers also found that opioid and heroin use declined among
teen sports players between 1997 and 2014, a period when overall use
of these drugs was increasing in the U.S.
Young athletes, in general, are less likely than their
nonparticipating peers to use illicit substances like cocaine or
LSD, said lead author Philip Veliz of the University of Michigan in
Ann Arbor.
“What was surprising were the decreasing trends in both lifetime
prevalence of nonmedical use of prescription opioids and heroin use
among athletes and nonathletes during a period when the prescribing
of opioid medication increased,” Veliz told Reuters Health by email.
Past research has found that athletes have a higher than average
likelihood of being exposed to opioids as a result of injuries.
Although that puts them at risk of abusing the drugs, little is
known about whether it also raises the risk of using heroin, the
authors write in Pediatrics.
The researchers studied eighteen groups of eighth and tenth graders
participating in the Monitoring the Future study between 1997 and
2014. More than 191,682 kids reported their sports or exercise
participation over the previous year and whether they had ever used
heroin or “narcotics other than heroin, such as methadone, opium,
morphine, codeine, Demerol, Vicodin, OxyContin, and Percocet . . .
without a doctor telling you to take them.”
Overall, about 7 percent of kids said they had ever used opioids
without a prescription and 2 percent had used heroin. Both
proportions decreased over time, however. In 1997-1999, 10 percent
said they had abused opioids, compared with 5 percent in 2012-2014.
Similarly, 2.3 percent reported ever having used heroin during the
first period, compared with 1 percent in the second period.
Half of teens said they had been involved in sports and exercise
almost every day, with 39 percent participating once a week at most
and 8 percent not participating in sports at all.
Playing sports appeared to have a protective effect, researchers
said.
Among kids who played no sports, 11 percent said they had used
opioids without a prescription, compared with 8 percent of those
playing sports at most once a week and 7 percent of those playing
sports every day.
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“First, since athletes need to be in shape to participate in sport
at an optimal level, they may avoid problematic drug use to be able
to perform at a high level in their sport of choice,” Veliz said.
“Second, since athletes are embedded in a social context (i.e.,
sport) with both prosocial peers and adults, they will conform to
certain behaviors that will discourage illicit drug use like
nonmedical prescription opioid use and heroin.”
Sports also provide structure in daily life, and there is usually
some adult present watching these young athletes at all times, he
said.
Athletes in high-contact sports that are high injury and
hypermasculine may be more likely to self-medicate with opioids or
try heroin, he added.
“Rates of both nonmedical use of prescription opioids and heroin use
are low among both 8th and 10th graders (compared to alcohol and
marijuana use),” Veliz said. “However, parents of athletes should be
concerned with nonmedical opioid use due to athletes’ increased risk
for injury and management of pain within their participation in
physical activity or sport.”
“Nonmedical opioid use has become a huge problem in recent years,”
so the results of this study are great news, said Joseph Palamar of
the department of population health at New York University Langone
Medical Center, who was not part of the new study.
“Almost a quarter of these teens that have used opioids nonmedically
40 or more times report lifetime heroin use so if we can't prevent a
teen from trying opioids we must try our hardest to at least prevent
continued use,” Palamar told Reuters Health by email.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2aiYjLS Pediatrics, online July 25, 2016.
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