Sports Editor John Enrietto’s column “HGH use in prep athletes alarming” (July 27, page C1) asks, why do 11 percent of high school athletes use HGH?

He gave some answers, but as with other drugs — alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and others — there are thousands of excuses.

For myself as a kid, alcohol and tobacco use were to fit in and prove your manhood, to prove you were big, bad and brave enough to do it. Sound familiar? It is their way of being some kind of “peer-anoid” comic book super-stupor hero. We all have passed our stupidity on to them.

Dope, alcohol, tobacco, HGH and all others.