Texas lawmakers will likely end H.S. steroid testing
The Texas state legislature will soon vote on whether to keep random drug testing of high school athletes in the state budget. All signs are pointing towards ending the program, according to several reports.
Texas has been testing athletes since 2007. The state has since spent $9 million testing 62,892 athletes. One-hundred-ninety of those tests came back positive, and funding has steadily declined from an annual $3 million to about $650,000 this year.
Legislators and advocates say the tests deter student athletes from using drugs, out of fear that they will be randomly selected for testing. If the program is discontinued, as expected, they will turn to educational outreach and other approaches to attempt to keep kids away from steroids.
One of the loudest voices in the conversation has been that of Don Hooton, whose 17-year-old son committed suicide in 2003. Hooton's son had started taking steroids in hopes of making the varsity baseball team, according to his father, who spoke with WBUR's "Only a Game."
Our youngest son Taylor was a high school baseball player. Sixteen-years-old, his coach told him he needed to get bigger to improve his chances of making the varsity team in his senior year. And, unbeknownst to the coach, when Taylor went back to the dugout, half of the boys on Taylor’s baseball team were using anabolic steroids. And the long and short of it is Taylor began injecting himself with two different types of anabolic steroids, and seven months later he died. And as parents, we were shocked — shocked to find out how dangerous these drugs could be, probably even more shocked to find out how many kids across this country are, even today, playing with these drugs.
Hooton and his wife have since started the Taylor Hooton Foundation, dedicated to anti-drug education. He says the schools need to focus on educational programs that teach athletes about the risks associated with steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.
The percentage of student athletes who tested positive in Texas' random drug tests is far below the estimated national average, according to a study conducted by the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids. Released in the summer of 2014, the study found that about seven percent of U.S. high school students use steroids. That study didn't test for human growth hormone (HGH), according to Hooton. A poll showed that 11 percent of students have used HGH.
What we need to learn is the only real weapon we have in our arsenal is education. But sadly, 85 percent of our children, nationally, report that they’ve never had an adult — no coach, no teacher, no parent, no one — I mean, we talk to them about heroin, marijuana and alcohol, but we are investing minimal resources in teaching our kids why they need to be staying away from this junk.
If the state legislature votes to discontinue testing, that will leave Illinois and New Jersey as the only states that run state-wide testing of high school athletes. Florida tested athletes during the 2008-2009 school year, then discontinued the program, according to USA Today High School Sports.
The vote will be held within the next few days. The head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has been outspoken about the need to keep the program in place. Instead, the state needs to expand the program and make the testing more thorough.
“The money is there,” Travis Tygart said. “Look at what’s spent on football stadiums, camps, trainers. If you think education alone is going to stop them, it isn’t.”
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Danielle Elliot is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact her at delliot@yahoo-inc.com or find her onTwitter and Facebook.
