Monday, October 5, 2015

Masking the Pain: Denver Fox31 on Toradol Use in College Sports


This investigative piece takes a close look at Colorado university athletic programs and their use of a potent pain killer - Toradol. The drug is not in wide use here at CU-Boulder.

Chris Halsne of Fox 31 followed up on the original report in a piece that aired last night. He reports that Oklahoma extensively uses the drug:
New records from the University of Oklahoma prove that since 2012, student-athletes were given 4,086 doses of Toradol. The distribution covered athletes in nearly every men’s and women’s sport: baseball, track, gymnastics, tennis, basketball, wrestling, rowing, softball and volleyball, with football players receiving the most (1,490 doses.)
Last spring, the University of Southern California settled a lawsuit with a former football player over alleged Toradol abuse leading to his health problems.

Halsne reports that the head NCAA's chief medical officer, Dr.Brian Hainline, says that things must change:
“We must shift the culture on painkillers. I think the culture now that it’s too easy to give a pain medicine. It’s too easy when an athlete is sore, to say well, why don’t you take this, you’ll feel better before the game.”
I think it is safe to conclude that we should be expecting to hear lots more about painkillers as performance enhancers in the near future.

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