Study Finds that Playing High School Football and Hockey Increases the Odds of Stimulant Abuse

Teen athletes are at heightened risk for misusing or abusing prescription medication, according to a new study. The landmark 2022 study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that high school seniors who played contact sports like hockey or football were about 50 percent more likely to abuse prescription stimulants in the decade after graduation, compared to students who didn’t play those types of sports. The study authors collected data on more than 4,770 high school seniors. Some students played contact sports, while others did semi-contact sports like baseball or field hockey, or non-contact sports like track or swimming. Researchers followed the study participants for ten years until their late twenties. They discovered that 31 percent of high school seniors had misused prescription drugs at least once at ages seventeen or eighteen. Among those in contact sports, 11 percent of seniors misused prescription stimulants. The rate of misusing stimulants increased to 18 percent when the study participants were twenty and twenty-one years of age.



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