Nicotine in sports: High use but little evidence of effects on performance

Research found little evidence of performance-lifting effects of nicotine use in most studies

When you think nicotine, you probably think of smokers, addiction, carcinogens and disease - not elite athletes and sporting performance.

However, our research published today shows that the use of nicotine among athletes is high and increasing.

In some sports, up to half, the team uses nicotine in various forms, mostly as smokeless chewing tobacco or nicotine patches and gum. This led the World Anti-Doping Agency to place nicotine on its monitoring programme in 2012, indicating that it could be upgraded to the list of banned substances.

We found little evidence of