<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Thursday, March 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

Survey: Teen use of HGH more than doubles during past year

The Columbian
Published: July 23, 2014, 12:00am

NEW YORK — Experimentation with human growth hormones by America’s teens more than doubled in the past year, as more young people looked to drugs to boost their athletic performance and improve their looks, according to a new, large-scale national survey.

In a confidential 2013 survey of 3,705 high school students, being released Wednesday by the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, 11 percent reported using synthetic HGH at least once — up from about 5 percent in the four preceding annual surveys. Teen use of steroids increased from 5 percent to 7 percent over the same period, the survey found.

Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, depicted the numbers as alarming but not surprising, given the extensive online marketing of performance-enhancing substances and near-total lack of drug testing for high school athletes.

“It’s what you get when you combine aggressive promotion from for-profit companies with a vulnerable target — kids who want a quick fix and don’t care about health risk,” Tygart said. “It’s a very easy sell, unfortunately.”

Nine percent of teen girls reported trying synthetic HGH and 12 percent of boys.

“A picture emerges of teens — both boys and girls — entering a largely unregulated marketplace (online and in-store) in which performance-enhancing substances of many varieties are aggressively promoted with promises of improved muscle mass, performance and appearance,” said the report. “This is an area of apparently growing interest and potential danger to teens that cries out for stricter controls on manufacture and marketing.”

Given the high cost of authentic HGH, it is possible that some of teens who reported using it may in fact have obtained fake products. As the survey said, “It’s very difficult to know what exactly is in the substances teens are consuming, or what the short and long-term impact on their health may be.”

Steve Pasierb, president of the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, said the motives of today’s youthful dopers were different from the rebellious or escapist attitudes that traditionally accompanied teen drinking and pot-smoking.

“This is about how you feel, how you look,” Pasierb said. “They’re doing this thing to get ahead. … Girls want to be thin and toned. For a lot of boys, it’s about their six-pack.”

He urged parents to talk candidly with their children about the dangers of performance-enhancing substances, but to avoid moralizing.

“It’s not about illegality, or whether you’re a good parent or bad parent,” he said. “It’s a health issue. These substances literally alter your body.”

Pasierb said high school coaches have a key role in combatting doping. Some are vigilant, other oblivious and perhaps a third are prepared to tolerate doping in the interests of winning, he said.

Synthetic HGH is supposed to be available only by prescription, yet products claiming to contain HGH are widely promoted and enforcement of the regulations is inconsistent, Tygart said.

The survey of 3,705 students in grades 9-12 was conducted at their schools between February and June of 2013. The margin of error was calculated at plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.

Loading...