PILL-POPPING GENERATION SEEKS THAT EXTRA EDGE

OTTAWA (CP) -- See Johnny run. See Johnny run fast.

See Johnny take a pill or some powder to see if he can't run even faster.

Dating back to the Ben Johnson steroid scandal of 1988, Canada and certain
parts of the world have been taking aim at performance-enhancing drug use
by elite athletes.

Now, attention is turning to an alarming new trend in doping circles.

Children as young as 11 are looking to medicine, protein supplements,
steroids and caffeine in order to become swifter, stronger, more attractive.

As a prelude to a national conference, Doping in Sports Among Youth in
Canada, in Montreal from Feb. 23 to 25, Christiane Ayotte, director of
Montreal's anti-doping laboratory, is on a national tour to raise awareness
about drug use among our youngest athletes.

Ayotte doesn't pull punches when she talks about the potential harm
children are causing themselves.

"Maybe we can't fully reverse the trend," she says, "but I can't believe
we're not capable of telling our young people, 'Don't kill yourselves.'"

A goal of Ayotte is to fight a pill-popping culture that has become
pervasive and acceptable.

When baseball slugger Mark McGwire admitted using a muscle-building steroid
called Androstenedione during his assault on Roger Maris's single-season
home-run record three years ago, McGwire was largely defended for his actions.

The reporter who saw the supplement in his locker and wrote about it was
largely criticized.

Baseball doesn't test its athletes, so what's the problem?

In part, the problem is that a lot of young athletes want to be like Mark,
or like many other professional and Olympic athletes who don't restrict
their use of juice to freshly squeezed oranges.

A 1998 survey conducted by the RCMP in Quebec, involving 2,123 athletes
between the ages of 11 and 18, found that nearly 40 per cent (38.7)
reported using a muscle-building protein such as creatine; 22.6 per cent
used stimulants; 11.7 per cent had analgesics (pain relievers) in their
program; and 40.2 per cent looked to caffeine boosts.

The results are comparable with surveys conducted in other countries.

"We know we have a problem," Ayotte says. "It's time to talk about
alternatives."

"Every time an athlete says, 'I have no chance because the competition is
cheating,'" Ayotte says, "It causes someone else to do doping. That cycle
has to be broken."