The California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) set up a new drug screening program that was just initiated five days ago according to Dave Meltzer of MMAJunkie.com. The program is deemed to strengthen and streamline the process of drug testing in one of the grandest hotbeds for MMA in the country as stated in the report.
 
The program was formed and finalized by Bill Douglas, the new Assistant Executive Officer after the resignation of Armando Garcia. This new drug screening program was first performed in the two events held in California—a boxing card promoted by Roy Englebrecht and the King of the Cage event. According to the report published by Tom Hamlin of MMAWeekly.com, the primary purpose of CSAC is to perform steroid testing along with one of the two labs of World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) in the country. It was in early November when CSAC became WADA’s exclusive client in combating sports testing. Meanwhile, NCAA, U.S. Olympic Team, and NFL is being handled by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) lab.
 
Hamlin also reported that the commission has doubled its support to break up the facilities utilized for both steroids and drugs of abuse testing according to Douglas. So, the UCLA lab will be responsible in handling performance enhancing drugs, while the current facility of CSAC, Quest Diagnostics, will be responsible in handling drugs of abuse. “With this budget, we should be able to test every single bout on every single show; no matter the size of the show,” he said. It was also stated in his report the clarification made by Douglas by saying that the testing for every boxing participant in MMA California was a goal and not actually a rule. However, it only happened that the new support allowed the commission to perform two steroid tests at least for every event apart from the added testing for drugs of abuse as Douglas explained.

Meltzer also mentioned that the policy is originally planned to include testing for recreational drugs of every fighter on each show. Every fighter on the major shows will be tested for steroids; while only main eventers will be tested on smaller shows. Random undercard fighters and fighters in title matches will also be included in the test. “My mentality is very different from my predecessor,” Douglas uttered. “I don’t have a ‘gotcha’ policy and we’re not looking to be happy catching people.”

Moreover, Douglas is attempting to obtain new bylaws passed that would grant California with the same power as Nevada. Once this is approved, California will also have the ability to turn over a decision once the winner was discovered to be positive for a performance enhancing drug.
 
Currently, Meltzer reported that the new bylaws are still being reviewed by the state department of finance. His report also mentioned that the previous performance enhancing drugs test for the fighters, which is conducted the day of the fight, was not very much effective in catching fighters who are using banned drugs during their early training and off-season. More importantly, Douglas concluded that “if this testing forces people to deal with issues ahead of time, it may allow their families to have more time with them, save them from health problems in later life or even premature death.”

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