Ethics Newsline®

SACRAMENTO
Increasingly concerned about steroid use by students, California high schools soon will be required to implement new policies aimed at curbing the spread of the drugs under new rules approved last week.

The state’s high school governing body, the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), met last week and adopted a set of measures targeting the spread of steroids among the state’s young athletes.

The 129-member CIF unanimously approved measures that require coaches to take training in understanding steroids and muscle-building supplements; regulate which dietary supplements coaches can distribute to players; and require parents, players, and school officials to sign contracts banning steroids.

Similar efforts are being considered in Michigan, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Virginia, reported USA Today. In New Mexico, Gov. Bill Richardson last month announced $330,000 in state funding for a random steroid testing program scheduled to begin in July 2006.

The new California measures will take effect this fall, though coaches will have until the end of 2008 to earn their certification, reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

The move follows the release of studies charting a steep increase in steroid use by high-schoolers, with usage rates doubling from 1991 to 2003, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While many coaches welcomed the new CIF measures as a worthy effort, others said the initiative was much ado about nothing, too much work for already-overburdened coaches, or a waste of time since it lacks teeth in the form of actual testing.

Still others said that while steroid use was worth targeting, other drug problems loomed larger. While more than 3 percent of 12th-graders admitted using steroids in a national 2004 survey, more than 76 percent said they had used alcohol, marijuana (45.7 percent), cocaine (8.1 percent), or ecstasy (7.5 percent), reported the Chronicle.

“A fair percentage of 11th-graders are binge drinking and then driving, getting into car accidents, and kids are getting killed,” Richard Simpson, assistant superintendent of the Conejo Valley school district in Ventura County, told USA Today. “It’s not that we don’t care about steroids. It’s just not problem No. 1.”