Opinions are divided on a bill that would require random testing for state athletes.
By JOHN SCHWARB
Published April 13, 2004
Imagine Joe Slugger from the local high school fulfilling a dream, hitting the championship-winning home run at Legends Field next month in the state baseball tournament.
Cheers rain down as he circles the bases, teammates pour out of the dugout to gather around home plate and celebrate his arrival. But before going into the stands to hug his parents and to get a kiss from his girlfriend, before reliving the moment for the media, an official escorts him to a restroom.
Where Joe Slugger takes a steroid test.
Sound farfetched? Such a scenario could exist this fall if lawmakers pass a landmark bill requiring schools, as a condition of their Florida High School Athletic Association membership, to randomly test athletes for performance-enhancing drugs such as steroids.
"It's time to do something like this," said Rep. Marcelo Llorente, R-Miami, the bill's sponsor. "We need to make sure we protect our kids from steroid use, and I think we should put something in place to deter them from doing it."
Statistics show the percentage of high school students using illegal steroids is on the rise. A 2000 University of Michigan study of 50,000 seniors found that 3.5 percent used steroids at least once, an increase from 2.1 percent in 1991.
Last month, a California state senator leading a committee review of the issue released a survey of 500 state high school students that found 11 percent of boys and 5 percent of girls have used performance-enhancing drugs.
Numbers aside, steroids have become a high-profile issue. President Bush condemned steroid abuse in the State of the Union address, and in February a California grand jury indicted four men who face accusations of running a steroid-distribution network. Among the indicted was baseball slugger Barry Bonds' personal trainer.
Major professional sports leagues test athletes for steroids, as does the NCAA on a random basis. No state requires testing of high school athletes.
Llorente's bill passed an education subcommittee and is waiting to be heard in a parent-education committee, but opinions vary on whether it is truly necessary.
"We're not the police. I don't want to go there," Pasco County School Board member Marge Whaley said. "We are the educational institution, we have resources in place to deal with these issues. We are not medical facilities."
Costly, but at what cost?
The steroid-testing bill (HB 861) specifies that a district school board test 5 percent of a student-athlete population of a school, but makes no mention of how much it would cost or where the money would come from.
Steroid testing is more expensive than testing for drugs such as marijuana and amphetamines, as there are numerous kinds of steroids and only a specialized test can attempt to detect all of them. Individual tests can cost $100 or more, though Llorente said testing could be done through a University of Florida laboratory for $50 or less.
At $50 each, testing 5 percent of the 220,000 students in Florida who participated in at least one sanctioned sport in 2002-03 would cost $550,000.
Based on last year's state-average teacher salary, that kind of cash could hire 13 new teachers. Others say that sum could be poured into classroom drug education, further reducing the need for testing.
In Pinellas County, for example, where approximately 8,000 public school students participate in sports, the cost would be $20,000 annually. And that's not taking into account private schools or the other costs that would arise from testing hundreds of students, such as record-keeping and policing.
But with peer pressure, pressure to perform on athletic fields and increased pressure to earn scholarships, some claim testing is the most direct method to curbing steroid use in high school athletes.
"I am a big proponent of prevention activities, on the other hand I don't think that anybody listens," said Dr. Martha Brown, the director of South Florida's Division of Professional Health Services and a clinician for the NFL's substance-abuse program.
"I can sit there and tell you your heart's going to enlarge, you're not going to be able to have children (with prolonged steroid abuse). I can say all those things but until they see it or it happens to a friend, it's hard for them to sometimes buy into it.
"The "just say no' campaign doesn't do well once you're out of junior high."
Not in our back yard
Hernando High football and weightlifting coach Bill Browning said "there are some eyebrows raised" almost every year at the state weightlifting meet caused by some student-athlete who posts an "astronomical lift."
But try finding a coach who admits to a steroid problem in his corner of the state.
"I don't think it's a problem in our area, but you could talk to someone in Miami and they're going to tell you the same thing," Browning said. "Is there not anybody in the state of Florida taking steroids? Obviously the law of averages tells you there probably is."
FHSAA commissioner Bob Hughes regularly sits on coaches advisory committees and athletic director committees in every sport and said the steroid issue has been a nonissue to his constituents.
His office frequently deals with accusations from one school accusing another of illegal recruiting and other wrongdoing, but said a school that has lost a title has never filed an allegation that the victor had players using performance-enhancing drugs.
FHSAA bylaws prohibit performance-enhancing drug use, but don't specify whether athletes suspected of use can be subjected to testing. If random members of a team were tested, there is no guarantee that testing would identify users.
"I don't really think that we should be mandating how it should be applied," said Rep. Faye Culp, R-Tampa, who is co-sponsoring a different bill authorizing school boards to require drug testing for middle and high school students as a condition of participation in extracurricular activities.
"I think (5 percent) is an arbitrary number," she said. "That number should be up to the school board, done at individual schools where they see fit."
As written, Llorente's bill would not address steroid use among nonathletes.
Armwood football coach Sean Callahan remembers when his school sponsored a "Mr. and Mrs. Hawk" bodybuilding contest fundraiser years ago. He recognized a bulked-up student with "acne running up the back of his neck, his pectoral muscles pulling hard toward center."
Such symptoms are in line with steroid use. Yet this student was not an athlete and therefore would have no chance of being tested under the pending legislation.
Callahan did question the student, then a senior, and said he saw him a few years later working at a nutritional-supplement store. He was noticeably smaller.
"This is something we could take care of ourselves," Callahan said. "If there is a problem, I don't see it. From talking to other coaches in Polk and Hillsborough counties, they don't seem to have a problem with it either."
Parents, know or no?
Polk County, thanks to a $236,080 federal grant, is testing 4,800 high school athletes this spring as part of a nationwide program evaluating the extent of drug use and whether testing is a deterrent. Yet those tests monitor only drugs such as marijuana and cocaine, with steroid test expense being so substantial.
Regardless of the drug being tested for, privacy questions arise with mandatory testing, random or otherwise.
"Will things be found out with blood data that don't need to be known?" Pinellas County athletic director Walter Weller said. "There's a certain level of privacy that the family needs to take."
Llorente, a former college baseball player at Tulane who once tested for steroids immediately after a playoff game, does not see it quite the same way. He said parents may not notice the warning signs and therefore testing is a necessary public-policy check to ensure kids do not use steroids.
Some parents fall in the middle of that debate.
Mike Rotunda is probably better educated than most about steroids. He was tested regularly as a professional wrestler (negative) and said he knew competitors who abused steroids. He is more than equipped to explain the drugs' effects to his high-school age son Windham (a three-sport athlete at Hernando) and two younger children.
At the same time, he supports testing.
"As far as the legislator saying parents don't know, I would think parents could see some kinds of major changes in their kids. It happens too fast," Rotunda said. "But I don't take offense to (testing) because of growing up in the sports world, you see things that happen. That's the real world."
Springstead High junior running back Tim Dow knows that is the real world. He claims to have had a friend (now graduated) whom he knew used steroids. He said he would know if one of his offensive linemen was on steroids today, as they all work out together.
Testing would be no problem. They would have nothing to hide.
"It'll even out all the people who work hard to get it and those who cheat to get it," Dow said. "I think it would be an okay thing."
HOUSE BILL 861
The bill is an addendum to Florida statutes that allow district school boards supplemental powers and duties. Just as school boards can adopt programs and policies to ensure safety and welfare of students, under this bill they would be permitted to require random testing of 5 percent of student-athletes for performance-enhancing drugs.
The bill also requires the Florida High School Athletic Association to adopt bylaws specifying that in order to qualify for membership in the organization, schools must provide for random drug testing of their student-athletes.
THE BILL'S STATUS
On March 22 the bill, which was first filed Feb. 7, was passed by an education subcommittee 5-0. The bill will be heard next by another education committee, at a date to be determined. Area representatives on that committee include:
Faye Culp (R-Tampa), (813) 272-2920; Frank Farkas (R-St. Petersburg), (727) 893-9855; Heather Fiorentino (R-New Port Richey), (727) 816-1307; Ed Homan (R-Tampa), (813) 933-3330
