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New Jersey steroids testing for high school students has gaping hole

In this article, I lauded the state of New Jersey for passing legislation designed to test all high school athletes for eighty different steroids and performance enhancing drugs.

Sadly, I learned today that the New Jersey testing program has a serious gaping hole. Athletes will only be tested during the playoffs and only if their team is competing.

After forming a task force to examine and combat the epidemic scourge putting all our youth at risk for the one in ten thousand chance of having a career as a professional athlete, the New Jersey Governor passed this executive order. It looked great…until it fell short. While a severe penalty of a two-year ban will deter some, the ability to cycle off prior to playoffs to avoid testing blunts its teeth.
On the bright side, at least the highest level of the competitions is protected, but the temptation will still be there due to the playoff limitation.

It’s possible that NJ didn’t have the funds to test all schools instead of playoff schools. “They don’t have $$ for books, how can they afford millions of dollars for testing” laments Fernando Montes, Executive Director of the Taylor Hooton Foundation.

Taylor Hooton, as you may remember was the high school athlete who dies from a lethal cocktail of anabolic steroids. His father’s riveting testimony before Congress at last years MLB steroids hearings illuminated the proceedings like a proprietary torch.

Well, that and McGwire’s infamous “I’m not here to talk about the past” bombshell.

Compromises were made to get the New Jersey law passed at all. “We got a little salad and that’s it. There is the problem of schools not having the resources. They have the right intentions, and their headed in the right direction, but…now once you put some teeth in the measure and have mandatory testing. To reduce the likelihood of use, the penalty must be severe. Some say it should result in a complete ban from competition in high school” noted Montes. He was once a strength coach and saw first-hand the prevelance and effects of decades of varying drugs and now fights tirelessly beside the broken-hearted father of a dead teenage son to make sure no other parent should have to bury their child because the child misguidedly chose to try for a competitive advantage in a sport.

“The Taylor Hooton Foundation uses education to teach anyone and everyone with impact on young children…parents to coaches to teachers to law makers…how to get them to make a responsible decision. Taylor Hooton made a decision. We are now trying to make sure the next taylor Hooton chooses wisely and doesn’t go down the same path.”

Only parents who lost a child can understand the agony the parents went through. Its a grief that is unparalleled. “Taylor had the pinnacle of his life ahead of him and to lose his life for the reasons of trying to get a competitive advantage through anabolics is a most terrible tragedy” Montes points out touchingly.

This is a battle for the kids. It’s a battle for integrity in sports. It’s a battle against a proven public health menace. We cannot let it become pandemic by simply giving up and shrugging our shoulders. The easiest way for evil to be victorious men is for righteous men to do nothing. In a horrific and irresponsible article in the January 29, 2007 issue of ESPN The Magazine entitled The case for HGH: why the NFL needs them, ESPN says “we have been deeply conditioned to think of these drugs in sinister terms.”

Tell me then, ESPN. What is not sinister about the death of a teenage athlete due to overdosing on anabolic steroids? What is it you know that Congress is missing? Here are ESPN arguments for legalizing HGH: 1) Players recover from injury faster; 2) there are gaps in testing and players can avoid getting caught so why bother. We can’t have a perfectly clean game so why bother fighting for what we cannot achieve; 3) bigger, faster, stronger athletes means more broken records, which means more ticket sales, which means more MONEY; 4) since exceptions are made in certain medical circumstances there is “precedent” for expanding and broadening allowable tolerance of HGH; and finally…and this is the most odious…”we’ll cheer with a clear conscience the open-field hit that leaves a man cold as our game day beer because we’ll know [HGH] is an effective and honest remedy.”

I don’t know who the worldwide leader in sports truly is, but I do know they do not champion cheating, throwing the integrity in the game under the bus for the bottom line, or public health menaces.

Even though the NJ testing policy needs to broaden, here’s what New Jersey gets, along with Congress and every person properly concerned with the mental and physical health of our teens and college kids instead of selling magazines and “jacked up” highlights to our children:

From Governor Conley’s Executive Order 46: “Steroid use among teens has more than doubled over the last decade with an especially alarming increase among teenage girls.” [Author’s Note: They use them for easy, quick weight loss.]

The Governor continued: “Steroids and performance enhancers have profoundly harmful effects on the physical and mental health of teens….including increased chance of suffering heart attack or stroke; developing liver and other cancers; and triggering mood and hormonal imbalances.”

The findings of the task force recommend treating the steroid scourge EXACTLY like alcohol and drug abuse. DARE is partly responsible for education programs. The Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse and the Partnerships for a drug free America and drug free New Jersey are raising awareness in everyone from coaches to parents to students.

Still, the law needs to keep abreast of the science that creates new drugs all the time and crack down on them. Moreover, testing should expand. Finally, ESPN’s shamelessly capitalizing on cheating by plugging cheaters and trying to brainwash our youth that there is nothing to worry about and that we should legalize these substances should be denounced firmly at every opportunity. Maybe Congress should have a stern word with them because “Quite Frankly” they are trying to push dangerous drugs on our children, overtly, shamelessly and with junk science and circular arguments. All kneel and pray at the Holy Church of the Professional Athlete.

Well not on my watch.

While I’ll write a longer piece soon exposing the holes in the ESPN article, I’ll leave you with some quotes. First, a quote from Charles Dickens’ masterpiece A Tale of Two Cities about how shocking it is ESPN takes the position they do. “Is it possible?” asked Defarge bitterly. “Yes. And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and not only possible, but done – done mind you! Under a blue sky. Long live the devil.”

We must remain “deeply conditioned” to be intolerant of cheating and drugs. “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God himself” said Thomas Jefferson. We must never sacrifice fairness and honesty in sports for the last penny at the bottom of the barrel. As the immortal Grantland Rice wrote, “When the great scorer comes to mark against your name, he marks not that you won or lost, but how you played the game.”

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