Abstract

Molobe, Ikenna Daniel

This study was conducted to determine the knowledge, attitude and practice on drug abuse otherwise known as doping among sports men and women. This was a cross-sectional study based on a selfreport questionnaire which was carried out among sports persons at the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos. Systematic random sampling was used to select 345 participants (208 males and 137 females). The data from the study was analysed using frequency measures and chi-square procedure. Findings revealed a fair level of knowledge on the harmful effects and health implications of drug abuse for performance enhancement among study participants. According to the participants’ perception and behavioural attitude, respondents (44.4%) feel that someone should use drugs to boost performance in sports while 55.6% of the respondents do not agree with such attitude. Most respondents (56.0%) perceive most achievement records in sports to be related to drug use. The difference in the attitude towards doping between respondents level of education is significant (p<0.05). The respondents admitted that they have used the following prohibited drugs; alcohol (57.2%), ephedrine (11.8%), codeine (8.2%), steroid (5.6%), cocaine (5.6%), insulin (5.0%), marijuana (4.0%), heroin (1.1%), amphetamine (0.7%), cannabis (0.4%) and hygroton (0.4%). Findings also revealed that some of the sports persons also abuse OTC [e.g acetaminophen and NSAIDs] analgesic medicines (1.1%) and nonorthodox-herbal concoctions (1.8%) for performance enhancement. It was therefore concluded that the knowledge, attitude and practice of sports person on drug abuse is unfortunate. Considerably, more research is needed to develop effective prevention strategy that combines education, health and sports based interventions.