But 50% the sample were recreational weightlifters who only used the drugs casually. Purpose of use thus affected the frequency of use, and different kinds of illicit drugs were also associated with the different abuser profiles. From a criminal profiler's perspective, this suggests that, when examining who uses a particular performance-enhancing drug, a specific 'type' of athlete or non-athlete might be more likely to be associated with the drug, depending on his or her goals and sports. However, the difficulty of profiling substance abusers was admitted by the researchers, given that the model was too limited to have...

The study suggests that profiling substance abusers can be useful after the fact, but such studies often lack strong predictive abilities.
Works Cited

Hildebrandt, Thomas, James W. Langenbucher, Sasha J. Carr, & Pilar Sanjuan. (2007, Nov).

Modeling population heterogeneity in appearance -- and performance-enhancing drug

(APED) use: Applications of mixture modeling in 400 regular APED users. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 116. 4: p.…