By BENJAMIN HELFRICH and MICHAEL KASIBORSKI, dill News Service
Next year Illinois will become only the second state to test high school athletes for steroids.
The Illinois High School Association approved regulations that will enforce steroid testing at all 2007-08 State Finals. This bylaw would act as a pilot for expanded testing in future regular season play. A proposed state law, sponsored by Sen. Chris Lauzen (R, Aurora), would make the penalty for testing positive a year-long ban from competition.
Steroid use among high school sophomores and seniors was at its peak in 2002, with 2.2 percent of sophomores and 2.5 percent of seniors nationally juicing up, according to a study by Monitoring the Future, a government-funded group that studies high school behavior. In 2006, usage among sophomores and seniors was 1.2 percent and 1.8 percent respectively. New Jersey is the only other state to test for steroids.
But to Kurt Gibson, IHSA assistant executive director, steroids don’t need to be a national issue to warrant state attention.
“This problem is a very large one and these kinds of things are going on in Illinois,” Gibson said. In each Illinois high school roughly 13 kids have used steroids, Gibson said. He hopes that testing will deter athletes from succumbing to the temptation of performance-enhancing drugs.
“We need to have a hammer piece to reinforce that this behavior is wrong,” Gibson said. “That’s the testing component.”
Despite concerns about privacy and the rights of student athletes, the IHSA bylaw and proposed legislation have the initial backing of a legal heavy hitter. Steroid testing in Illinois high schools is rooted in a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision. In that opinion, the high court said drug testing students in competitive extracurricular activities is permissible.
The voluntary nature of sports as well as the school’s interest in discovering and preventing drug use are two main pillars of the decision. According to the ACLU of Illinois, steroid testing will have legal standing because of this decision.
“While we might not think it’s a good policy, in many ways [testing] is permissible by law,” said a spokesman for the ACLU of Illinois.
Still, the policy raises questions about the protection of student confidentiality. Gibson maintains that the confidentiality of testing results will not be an issue. According to him, reports based on test results will not be released publicly.
But according to the ACLU spokesman, test confidentiality will be threatened by the tight-knit nature of school communities. He speculated it will be easy to identify students removed from teams because of positive steroid tests.
Gibson estimates that each test will cost $175, and he doesn’t know where that money will come from.
