The American state of New Jersey has become the first in the country to require random steroid testing in school sports in an attempt to halt the growing use of performance-enhancing drugs that some experts estimate affects as many as 8% of high-school athletes.
The order, signed on Tuesday by the state’s acting Governor, Richard Codey, will require random testing of all teenage teams that make it to state championship level. A task force set up by the governor is still weighing up penalties, but at the least players that test positive are likely to be excluded from competition.
”As a parent, as a coach and a concerned citizen, this isn’t an issue we can ignore,” Codey told a news conference announcing the programme. ”This is a growing public health threat, one we can’t leave up to individual parents, coaches or schools to handle.”
The pressure on high-school sports players in the US is intense. American football games can attract tens of thousands of spectators and often dominate the sports pages of the local papers. The best high-school players can expect scholarships from the top colleges where the interest is even greater — stadiums commonly hold as many as 90 000 people, more than even the biggest football stadiums in the United Kingdom.
Codey cited figures from a study by the state’s division of health services that found steroid use among New Jersey high-school athletes had increased from 3% in 1995 to about 5% in 2001. The governor, who is also a youth basketball coach, said the figure could now be as high as 8% of the state’s 230 000 school athletes.
One parent who welcomed Tuesday’s announcement was Donald Hooton, whose son, Taylor, 17, hanged himself in 2003 after suffering withdrawal symptoms from steroids. Taylor began taking steroids at the age of 16 after his high-school baseball coach in Plano, Texas, told him and another student they needed to ”bulk up” if they wanted to make the senior team.
Over the following months, the slightly built schoolboy put on 13,6kg, but at the same time began experiencing wild mood swings, irritability, aggressive behaviour and acne on his back. His parents suspected recreational drugs, but it was only after they sent him to a psychiatrist that he admitted he had been buying steroids from a local gym. A few weeks after he stopped taking the drug, he killed himself.
Hooton, who wants a nationwide high-school testing programme, said much of the responsibility lies with coaches who have adopted a ”don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on steroids.
”I’m not suggesting that the coach told him to do steroids, but at the same time he never told him how to go about getting bigger through exercise. And he didn’t ask any questions when Taylor walked into that dugout having put on all that size. There were 25 boys on that team, and we know for a fact that five of them were doing steroids and believe it may have been as high as nine.”
Hooton believes that in Texas and other southern states steroid abuse among young males has reached epidemic proportions.
”Kids tell me that when you show up to a high-school [American] football game as many as one-third to a half of the boys under those helmets are juicing.”
Bob Baly, assistant director of the New Jersey schools’ athletic association and a member of the governor’s taskforce, said part of the state’s plan is to educate coaches.
”We want to give them a greater understanding of steroid abuse and the tell-tale signs of what to look for. From our understanding this is a growing problem, and we want this to be a deterrent.”
Hooton gave passionate testimony to a congressional committee this year that was instrumental in Major League baseball’s decision to toughen its stance on steroid abuse.
Among those giving evidence to the committee was Raphael Palmero, the Baltimore Orioles star hitter, who told members of Congress he had never taken steroids. A few months later, he failed a test for an anabolic steroid that can only be administered by injection.
”It is well documented that athletes are only second to parents in influencing kids,” Hooton said. ”And when you get Mark McGuire [another baseball star] admitting he was taking a steroid precursor and then in the following weeks sales of that drug go up four times — well, we don’t have to hypothesise about the effect.” — Guardian Unlimited Â