Steroids Primer to Go to All U.S. High Schools

A chemists’ group and a coaches’ association announced plans today to send each American high school a primer on steroids, stressing testing as a way to crack down on cheaters.

The “High School Coaches’ Guide to Steroid Use and Detection” will be sent to the 19,000 high schools in the United States in upcoming weeks, in time for football season, said Skip Morris, executive director of the National High School Athletic Coaches Assn.

The guide, produced by the American Assn. for Clinical Chemistry, says, “Steroid use is growing to epidemic proportions . . . among high school athletes” and “the only way to conclusively prove steroid use is by detecting it in a test of an athlete’s urine.”

Steroids can enhance muscle development and performance, but they have harmful side effects that include an increased risk of cancer.

“Schools are beginning to look at testing programs as a tool to rid their schools of these dangerous drugs,” Morris said. “A complete program of education and testing can move us forward.”

With the cost of a single urine test for steroids approaching $200, “it’s not realistic at all to try and test every kid,” Morris said. Most schools, then, would choose “random testing--collecting urine samples from the whole football team, and selecting two, four . . . whatever your budget will allow,” he said.

Morris dismissed the civil rights and privacy objections to forcing high school football players to give urine samples. He said many young athletes have asked for testing programs to prove their teams are clean.

Certain Requirements

“They want people in their community to know that they don’t want to cheat,” he said.

Morris noted that high school athletes already must conform to certain requirements to play, such as maintaining their grades, and said drug testing can be simply one more requirement for the privilege of participating.

“It seems as if steroid use has reached almost endemic proportions among our young athletes,” said Dr. Fred S. Apple, a University of Minnesota medical professor and an official in the chemists’ group, which is meeting in Atlanta this week.

Apple noted a recent Journal of the American Medical Assn. report that said 7% of male high school seniors had used anabolic steroids.

Although steroids may enhance an athlete’s performance, they may ultimately stunt his growth and lead to liver cancer and other medical problems, Apple said.

Morris said high school coaches, who have “a tremendous amount of influence” over their athletes, are the logical place to focus anti-steroid education efforts.