New Jersey Plans Broad Steroid Testing for School Sports
By RICHARD LEZIN JONES
WEST ORANGE, N.J., Dec. 20 - New Jersey's acting governor signed an executive order Tuesday that requires random steroid testing for athletes on high school teams that qualify for postseason play. The order makes the state the first to test high school students in all sports for performance-enhancing drugs.
Testing of students in championship tournaments is scheduled to begin with the 2006-7 school year and will be overseen by the state's interscholastic athletic association. The group is now weighing possible penalties for students who test positive. One proposal would exclude them from competition but would allow their teams to play.
Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey said that he felt compelled to issue the order, through powers granted the governor in the state's Constitution, after reviewing the findings of the task force he appointed earlier this year to study the use of steroids by student-athletes.
Mr. Codey cited figures from a study by the state's Division of Health Services that found that steroid use among New Jersey high school students had increased from 3 percent in 1995 to about 5 percent in 2001. Mr. Codey, who is also a youth basketball coach, said that he believed that figure now could be as high as 8 percent.
"As a parent, as a coach and concerned citizen, this isn't an issue we can ignore," Mr. Codey said during a news conference in a high school auditorium. "We don't have the luxury of putting this off or leaving it for someone else to deal with. This is a growing public health threat, one we can't leave up to individual parents, coaches, schools to handle."
The courts have upheld the right of schools to test athletes for performance-enhancing drugs under certain conditions. As a result, a legal challenge is unlikely, said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. But others questioned whether the state was intruding on the prerogatives of parents in mandating the testing of children.
Mr. Codey, who steps down as governor in January, said that he would like to see the testing program expanded within three years to include teams during their regular seasons and added that he advocated the testing of all high school students for illicit drugs.
Several other states, including Illinois, Minnesota and Rhode Island, considered anti-steroid legislation in the past year, but no programs were enacted. Those initiatives involved mostly educating students about the dangers of steroids.
Officials in New Mexico said that they would begin random testing of student-athletes in four school districts next month as part of a pilot program that Gov. Bill Richardson hoped to eventually expand statewide. New Jersey is the first state to authorize the testing of students in all sports.
"It's the first that we're aware that will have any kind of testing on a state association level," said Jerry Diehl, assistant director of the National Federation of State High School Associations. "Obviously random testing is a deterrent. Whether it's feasible to do from a cost standpoint? That you don't know."
The testing program is expected to cost about $50,000 in the first year, Mr. Codey said, adding that he hoped to pay for the plan using money from the state's general fund. Officials at the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association, which administers high school sports, will begin fine-tuning the testing plan in the next month.
New Jersey offers championships in 31 sports - among the most of any state - which typically involve about 10,000 students. The testing plan calls for about 5 percent of those participants, or 500 students, to be tested at random. In all, about 220,000 New Jersey students take part in high school athletics. Athletes use steroids to increase speed and strength. Steroids can be detected through blood and urine tests; state officials said they had not decided which method would be used.
"It's a challenge but obviously this is going to benefit the kids and it's going to benefit athletics in this state," said Bob Baly, the assistant director of the interscholastic athletic association and a member of the governor's steroid task force. "New Jersey is being proactive."
Mr. Codey's order was lauded by those who have campaigned against performance-enhancing drugs in sports. "Testing programs are a great deterrent," said Frank Uryasz, president of the National Center for Drug Free Sport.
Mr. Uryasz said that steroid use had declined from its peak in the late 1980's when, in one survey, about 10 percent of college football players admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs. Today, Mr. Uryasz said, those same surveys show that only about 2 percent of players admit using such substances.
The decrease, he said, is attributable to more testing and greater vigilance.
Others, however, dispute the effectiveness of testing as a deterrent. Ms. Jacobs of the A.C.L.U. said there were no clear links between testing and a drop in drug use.
Ms. Jacobs said that money earmarked for testing should instead be used to promote programs to increase awareness among students about the dangers of steroids - a step that she said had led to the decrease in steroid use.
She also wondered whether the tests in Mr. Codey's plan were an invasion of the privacy for the students and their families. "This really undercuts the rights and roles of the parent and interferes with family privacy," Ms. Jacobs said. "It should be up to a family to decide what kind of exams a student should be subjected to."
A few students who attended Mr. Codey's news conference at Seton Hall Prep said that they welcomed the testing.
"I don't mind being tested for steroids," said Ralph Jones, a 16-year-old junior who is a forward on the school's basketball team. "If you're not using, you don't have anything to worry about."
Other said that they believed the tests were a good way to find students who might be cheating.
"I don't want to be working my tail off in the off-season and then have some guys use steroids and then be better than me because he took the easy way out," said Gary Wallace, who is 17, a junior point guard and is - like Jones - a former player on teams Mr. Codey has coached. "It should just be hard work, the natural way."
Members of the task force cautioned, however, that the testing would not catch every steroid user.
"It's not going to be perfect, no testing program is perfect," said Peter King, a writer for Sports Illustrated who served on the panel. "But it's a start."