The Role of Nicotine in Sports: Why Athletes Use It, and What It Tells Us

In 2023, a survey of professional rugby players in the UK and Ireland found that roughly 25% were using nicotine products—not cigarettes (which would destroy lung function), but nicotine pouches, gum, and lozenges. The pattern has been documented across sports: baseball players using nicotine pouches in the dugout, footballers using nicotine gum before matches, endurance athletes experimenting with nicotine for its metabolic effects. These are not addicted individuals satisfying a craving. In many cases, they're nicotine-naive athletes using the substance deliberately, strategically, for performance enhancement. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) currently monitors nicotine use but does not prohibit it, though it has placed nicotine on its monitoring program. The phenomenon of nicotine use in elite sport challenges the narrative that nicotine is purely a harmful, addictive substance with no legitimate use. It also raises uncomfortable questions about what 'performance enhancement' means and where we draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable cognitive optimization.

The performance-enhancing effects of nicotine that athletes are pursuing are the same effects that make it addictive: enhanced attention, improved reaction time, increased arousal and alertness, and—at certain doses—pain modulation. For a baseball batter facing a 95-mph fastball, the difference between an average reaction time and a marginally improved one is the difference between a hit and a strikeout. For a rugby player making split-second decisions under physical exhaustion, enhanced cognitive focus can alter match outcomes. For an endurance athlete, nicotine's metabolic effects (increased lipolysis, altered substrate utilization) may delay fatigue. These effects are real, dose-dependent, and measurable in laboratory settings. The same pharmacology that hooks smokers is, in a different context and with a cleaner delivery system, a cognitive ergogenic aid. Whether this is acceptable—and for whom, in what contexts—is a question that sport has not yet resolved.

The delivery system is everything in this context, and the shift from smoking to smokeless nicotine has made athletic nicotine use possible. An athlete couldn't smoke cigarettes and compete at an elite level—the respiratory impairment would be performance-limiting. But nicotine pouches, gum, and lozenges deliver nicotine without pulmonary effects, making them viable for athletes who want the cognitive benefits without the lung damage. This is the same dynamic that drives harm reduction for smokers: separate the molecule from the delivery system, and the risk profile changes dramatically. The athlete using nicotine pouches is not harming their lungs. They are, however, becoming physiologically dependent on a substance that, if WADA eventually prohibits it, they'll have to withdraw from—potentially during competition. The ethical and practical dimensions of athletic nicotine use are still being mapped.

The comparison to caffeine is, in the athletic context, particularly salient—and particularly uncomfortable for those who want to draw bright lines. Caffeine is a performance-enhancing substance with established ergogenic effects: improved endurance, increased alertness, reduced perceived exertion. It was on WADA's prohibited list until 2004, when it was removed because the doses required for performance enhancement were indistinguishable from normal dietary intake, and enforcing a ban was impossible. Caffeine is now an accepted, expected part of athletic preparation—energy drinks, caffeine gels, pre-workout supplements. Nicotine operates through different receptors and has a different risk profile (higher addiction potential, more significant cardiovascular effects), but the functional logic is the same: a stimulant that enhances cognitive and possibly physical performance, consumed through a delivery system, with effects that are dose-dependent and individually variable. If caffeine is acceptable in sport, on what basis is nicotine excluded? The question has no clean answer, which is why WADA is monitoring rather than prohibiting.

The prevalence of nicotine use in specific sports reveals something about the demands of those sports. It's highest in sports that combine physical exertion with fine motor control and rapid decision-making—baseball, rugby, American football—and lower in pure endurance sports where the cognitive demands are simpler but the cardiovascular demands are extreme. This pattern suggests that athletes are using nicotine primarily for its cognitive effects (attention, reaction time, decision-making under fatigue) rather than its physical effects. The implication extends beyond sport: nicotine's cognitive-enhancing properties are real, and populations whose performance depends on sustained attention and rapid information processing under stress—not just athletes, but military personnel, surgeons, traders, long-haul drivers—may derive genuine functional benefit from nicotine. This is not an argument for universal nicotine use. It's an observation that the simplistic 'nicotine = bad' framing collapses under scrutiny, and that a more nuanced understanding—'nicotine has effects, some desirable, some undesirable, depending on dose, delivery system, and user characteristics'—is both more accurate and more useful for policy.

For public health, athletic nicotine use presents a communication challenge. The narrative of nicotine as a harmful, addictive substance with no redeeming qualities is undermined by the visible example of elite athletes choosing to use it for performance reasons. If the messaging insists that nicotine has no benefits, and athletes' lived experience contradicts that claim, the messaging loses credibility—not just with athletes, but with anyone who hears both the official message and the counterexample. A more honest communication strategy would acknowledge that nicotine has cognitive effects that some people find useful, while clearly explaining the addiction risk, the cardiovascular effects, and the importance of delivery system. This is more complex than 'nicotine is bad,' but it has the advantage of being true. And in an information environment where false claims are rapidly debunked, truth is the only durable communication strategy.