CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - With doping allegations making headlines once more, WBTV investigated whether rules exist in North Carolina to keep student athletes from experimenting with performance enhancing drugs.
"It's never too soon to start the education," said Leigh Ann Caldwell, who manages the sports medicine department for Carolinas Health Care System. CHS provides twelve athletic trainers to Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools.
"It does seem now that athletes and parents want to do whatever it takes to make their kid bigger, faster, stronger, and a lot of their role models are using performance enhancing drugs," said Caldwell.
The North Carolina High School Athletic Association has a policy against performance enhancing drugs. However, enforcement is up to individual schools, many of which do not perform random drug tests.
"As far as doing random drug testing, we do not do that," said Caldwell.
Caldwell says "doping" at the high school level is not the same as what we see in professional or even collegiate sports. Younger students may start by going overboard with energy drinks, vitamins, or supplements and progress from there.
"It's a bit of a tricky issue because many of the supplements that you can buy over the counter are not illegal substances, so we've got to be careful as it relates to performance enhancing drugs," said Davis Whitfield, Commissioner of the NC High School Athletic Association.
"I feel like it's our job to teach them what is right," said Patrick Pate, a camp counselor with the Charlotte-based ministry, Soldier's Camp. "Teach them to stay on their education and teach them to do things the honorable way, without trying to do any performance enhancement type things."
Anti-drug resources for parents and students:
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