Dec 26 2008
UIL Plans to Publish Results of Steroid Tests in High Schools
The University Interscholastic League (UIL) reported during the early summer, just after the academic year 2007-08 ended, that only two high school athletes were found out positive for anabolic steroid out of more than 10,000 randomly tested student athletes. But the recent report published by Enrique Rangel of Amarillo.com stated that there were actually four.
The information released by Rangel is based on the recent report given by the UIL to the members of Texas legislature. The UIL serves as the governing body that is responsible to oversee the $3 million steroid testing program for each year, which the Legislature permitted during the session held a year ago.
Currently, there are 22 “protocol positive results,” wherein students who declined to take the test or failed to show up during the test will be required to take the test for anabolic steroid. UIL athletic coordinator Mark Cousins also confirmed that 26 high school athletes were presently traced to test positive for anabolic steroids for all practical purposes.
UIL’s report provided to the members of the Legislature is welcomed with a positive note specially by Rep. Dan Flynn, co-author of Senate Bill 8, R-Van, and steroid-testing legislation. “This shows that the program is working,” Flynn uttered. “The testing is a deterrent. The students know they could be tested and stay away from steroids.” However, some of the legislators who are against the bill—three from the Senate and four from the House—expressed their strong disagreement.
“This is one of those issues that sounds good but has no real impact except wasting taxpayer dollars,” commented by Sen. Dan Patrick to the Houston Chronicle the first time UIL report was released. “I don’t want to diminish the seriousness of steroids, but you can’t take a sledgehammer to kill a gnat. Spending $1.5 million per kid is ridiculous.”
The Los Angeles Times released a report last April saying that Texas is the first state to conduct a random testing for high school athletes to track the regularity of steroid use among the youths. And this step is regarded to be the most dramatic step taken to fight the plague of muscle-building drugs, which have crept to several locker rooms in United States already.
Now, the UIL is planning to publish a report that will include the entire students who tested positive for the illegal drugs during the first semester of the present academic year according to Cousin. He also said that the complete report for the whole year will be released this coming summer. “We tested more than 3,000 football players because our testing is for all sports, whether in season or out of season,” Cousins claimed.
Flynn also said that the purpose why the bill is proposed is to significantly lessen the number of student athletes who are involving themselves to steroid use. Now, the Texas program is deemed to be the leading steroid testing program in the world. In fact, Texas program is about to break the record of 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, where only 3,667 professional athletes were randomly tested. For now, Texas program is deemed to perform a random testing that will range between 40,000 to 50,000 high school athletes out of more than 70,000 this year end according to the UIL.
Rangel reported that the reason behind this program is to battle the steroid use among the students of high school and college, which have been considered as a major concern in the state for the past years. This incident is viewed to be the influence of the involvement of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Jose Canseco, Andy Pettitte, and Mark McGwire to the usage of performance enhancing drugs that apparently provided them competitive edge over the other players in the field.
