11/6/2009
Written By: Sam Skelley
Category: Life  
School(s): Wilton  

In recent years steroids have made a huge impact on the sports world not only in professional sports but also in high school sports. Most notably Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens and Jose Canseco. Notice that all of these men are/were baseball players. The thing that makes their cases special is that all the arguments made against them are about their careers before Major League baseball instituted a ban on performance enhancing substances in 2006. The NHL also instituted a drug ban in 2006 because it was suspected that over 30% of players were using Performance Enhancing drugs.

Many states have started cracking down on substance abuse in high schools to try and keep kids off drugs. States like Florida, Texas, Illinois (started last year) and New Jersey all have random drug testing for high school athletes. In a national survey conducted by the CDC from 1991-2003 it was estimated that 3-3.5% of all high school athletes were using steroids or some other drug. You may think that might not be a lot based on the percentage but if you think about it there are 700,000 student athletes in California alone so just out of that state there would be 24,500 athletes using steroids.

 The drug tests are meant not only to check for steroid use but for other performance enhancing drugs as marijuana, testosterone, meth, HGH (human growth hormone), alcohol (mostly in sports that require steady nerves like archery), excessive caffeine levels and even over the counter painkillers such as ibuprofen.

Even though more and more states are starting to follow suite with the states that already have testing, Iowa, however will not follow. Yes, the Iowa High School Athletic Association feels that drug testing is not needed because only 4% of athletes surveyed in 2004 admitted to steroid use. There were 4000 athletes surveyed that year. And in 1999 only 2% admitted to steroid use in a similar survey.

At our school there have been not many, if any reported instances of steroid use. Many student athletes here feel that steroid use is wrong and useless. When asked about it junior Cale Austin said that “There should be more severe punishments for people that do use them like not being able to play college sports.” Senior Nate Fratzke said “I would never use them because they would cause more problems than they would solve not only legal issues but physical problems.”  

These numbers and percentages can be found at Maxpreps.com and Usatoday.com.