Alarm bells raised over young P.E.I. hockey players’ use of smelling salts as performance boosters [Video]

A grandmother of minor hockey players is campaigning to get smelling salts banned from rinks across Prince Edward Island. 

Barbara Brookins has several grandchildren between the ages of nine and 15 playing minor hockey, so she spends a lot of time at rinks. 

Recently, she noticed an unusual product available in a vending machine at her home arena in Kensington. 

The bottles are labelled as “hockey smelling salts,” and it turns out many young players are using the product under the belief that they are performance enhancers. 

“Smelling salts are not intended as a performance-enhancing medication [of] any kind, and even if they were, are we really promoting that our children use any type of performance enhancement?” …