Teen Use of Steroids Targeted in S.D.

In the first major state effort to stem the growing use of anabolic steroids among U.S. teen-agers, California secondary-school teachers next month will begin receiving a comprehensive curriculum that emphasizes the dangers of taking drugs to boost muscle strength and appearance.

The steroid education package is designed to overcome traditional student antipathy toward drug education by using games, videos and student role-playing to drive home points about steroids, often little understood by the teen-agers who consider taking the powerful hormones.

The material is geared toward broadening the knowledge of parents and school coaches as well. Educators say some coaches used steroids during their own days as athletes, and in some cases see steroid use as a way to enhance the competitiveness of their teams, overlooking the risks to students.

Specialists with the San Diego County office of education have put the 80-page curriculum together under contract with the state Department of Education, which plans to tie the plan to its Healthy Kids, Healthy California initiative that covers exercise and nutritional concepts as well.

‘Not Reasonable’

“It’s an excellent idea to show that it is not reasonable to take any drug unless you are sick and have a reason to do so,” said Dr. Don H. Catlin, chief of clinical pharmacology at the UCLA Medical Center and director of the testing laboratory for the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. Catlin consulted on the project.

Impetus for the new curriculum has come from several areas, both nationally and locally. More than 6.6% of U.S. high school seniors said that they had used steroids in a national survey released by the American Medical Assn. in December, 1988. Some say the figure is probably higher in California--especially in the Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego areas--because the drugs can be obtained cheaply and without regulation across the border in Tijuana.

At Carlsbad High School last spring, a teacher’s aide and part-time basketball coach was arrested and accused of selling anabolic steroids to school athletes. The aide, Gregory Thomas Triona, faces trial Oct. 30 in Vista Superior Court on felony charges of selling steroids.

Public interest was stimulated by the suspension of Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson after his positive test for steroids during the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.

“This curriculum is long overdue,” said Dr. Francis Nettl, a specialist in a joint UC San Diego-San Diego State University project on sports medicine and a finalist in track and field trials for the British Olympic team in 1984.

“This information needs to get out at an early stage, at even the junior high level, that there are serious side effects. . . ,” Nettl said. “For too long, the sports world has denied anyone even used them, or that there were problems, even though (use) has been going on since the 1950s.”

Develop Strength

Anabolic steroids are synthetic chemical compounds that mimic the natural human body hormones that develop muscle mass and accentuate so-called masculine traits of body hair, aggression and deep voices. They are legally available in the United States only by prescription for use by starvation or burn victims and for other medical conditions where changing hormonal levels can be beneficial.

Athletes have used them for years, mainly through black market purchases, to develop strength and bulk more quickly than through weightlifting and nutrition alone. Recently teen-agers have discovered their potential for improving physical appearance.

But an increasing body of scientific data has shown many side effects, both short and long term, ranging from acne and shrunken testicles to stunted growth, dangerous cholesterol levels, liver cancer, high blood pressure, increased aggression and cardiovascular damage.

It is the potential side effects that the new curriculum hopes to impress on students in a creative manner, although officials do not pretend that results will be quick or easy.

“I think that if students can be shown how they work and what can happen, they can begin to realize that the effects won’t be worth it,” said Justin Cunningham, a San Diego County office of education health specialist who wrote the program.

“We deliberately avoid a how-to-use approach, as well as a scare tactics approach,” said Cunningham, a former Kern County educator whose interest in steroids was piqued two years ago after he discovered that almost every player on the county’s premier high school football team had taken steroids in the belief that the drugs would give them an edge.

Serious Illness

The initial lessons, part of an intended five-part unit over a one-week period, involve students asking themselves whether they would risk serious illness or injury for the guarantee of an Olympic gold medal.

“Some will say ‘yes’ at the beginning,” Cunningham said, which indicates the perceptions that educators find themselves dealing with.

The heart of Cunningham’s lessons explains anabolic steroids scientifically and shows that, as with any drug, individuals are affected in different ways. The students play a game of dice to simulate side effects, rolling one die at first to determine effects from initial use, later adding second and third dice as the chances of more serious side effects--including death--increase, along with higher dosages.

“We also talk about ethics, having the students ‘become’ the Olympic committee and decide whether Ben Johnson should have been stripped of his medal,” Cunningham said. “And finally, we try to point them toward reliable information on strength and development, on human performance, and also talk about alternatives for achieving (peer) security than emphasizing physical appearance alone.”

The strength coach at Rancho Buena Vista High School, San Diego County’s top-ranked football team, said the curriculum will make his job easier.

Make Them Think

“It will make these kids think, participate and act on the information,” said 43-year-old Mike Burgener, a former Notre Dame football player, Olympic weightlifter and admitted user of steroids during his college days. “What I’ve been doing myself is more a lecture type of thing,” which may or may not always be effective.

“You can’t just get up and say, ‘Don’t take the drugs,’ because that can turn them off,” Burgener said. “You’ve got to let them make up their own minds.”

Nettl of the UC San Diego-San Diego State sports medicine program said that many coaches also need more education.

“Unfortunately, they are probably guilty at times of turning kids on by telling a kid that if he wants a football scholarship, he needs to gain weight, and gives a name and number” of a person who will supply the steroids, Nettl said. “The coaches often believe there is no harm, that if you control the dose there won’t be any problems.”

Burgener agreed in part, but said that, “while most coaches would never condone steroid use, sometimes by telling a student they want him bigger and faster without stressing there is a natural way to do it, through weights and nutrition, they leave the impression that steroids are OK, the Ben Johnson way . . . and the kids already know that steroids are around.”

Random Testing

Nettl would like to see the curriculum coupled with random testing of athletes, including those in high school, as suggested this summer by the National High School Athletic Coaches Assn. in conjunction with the American Assn. for Clinical Chemistry.

“I think that you have to have punishments, that whoever takes these will be heavily penalized, as horrible as that might sound to some,” Nettl said. “It absolutely would have an effect on high-school kids because there would then be kids afraid, and there would be peer pressure not to take them . . . education alone can’t do it, but can play a big part.”

For the meantime, the curriculum will be officially unveiled at a statewide conference of coaches next month. Robert Ryan, with the critical health issues unit at the state Department of Education, said the program should be at most school districts statewide by year’s end.