The increased news coverage of anabolic steroid use in sports over the past few years has led to the perception that steroid use by high school athletes is more common than it really is. Grandstanding legislators have used the exaggerated news coverage to call steroid use in baseball a “public health crisis.” Steroid use by teenagers is a big problem. But let’s don’t forget the more serious problems that are facing our teenagers.
OK. Let’s say the motive for this steroids hearing is, in fact, about protecting America’s kids from the harmful influence of sports leagues that care only about boosting ticket sales and TV ratings. Then I imagine we can expect a big ballyhooed hearing soon on the substance that is most glorified by sports leagues and kills more kids every year than every other drug combined.
Alcohol.
No single industry promotes the consumption of alcohol among teenagers as much as college and professional sports.
While Congressman Tom Davis (R-VA) is calling steroids in baseball a public health crisis, Congressman Tom Osbourne (R-NE) is calling alcohol in baseball a public health crisis.
“Probably 85 to 90 percent of the negative incidents on campus, whether dealing with players or other students, were in some way related to alcohol,” Osborne said by phone from Washington, D.C. “About 70,000 sexual assaults each year are related to alcohol, and 500,000 injuries.
“We have justifiable anxiety over 1,500 (American) deaths in Iraq of a two-year period, but alcohol kills 1,400 college students annually.”
How does alcohol use compare to steroid use in high school student?
The 1,400 college students who die each year from alcohol-related injuries translates to three or four students every single day. Try to find any reputable research that says steroids has killed a single child. There isn’t any. Several suicides have been linked to steroid use, but as tragic as they are, they do not constitute a public health crisis. The numbers of kids using steroids in the U.S. barely registers on the scale of teen drug use. In a 1999 study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2.7 percent of 8th- and 10th-graders and 2.9 percent of 12th-graders had taken steroids.
By contrast, 80 percent of high school seniors have used alcohol; 32 percent say they had been drunk in the last month. About 3 million teens are said to be alcoholics.
How about other drugs of abuse by teenagers?
Here are more details on student drug infractions that Texas school districts reported to the state. The increases are between 2005-06 and 2006-07; 2006-07 is the most recent year available.
•In the Texas Education Agency region that includes Dallas, Collin and Rockwall counties, the number of incidents in which students were disciplined for drug infractions rose 13 percent, from 1,961 to 2,221.
•In the TEA region that includes Denton, Tarrant and Wise counties, the number of reported incidents rose 50 percent, from 911 to 1,363.
•Statewide, the number increased 10 percent, from 17,797 to 19,572.
•The number of statewide felony-level offenses, such as heroin possession, increased 38 percent, from 978 to 1,345.
Maybe we should pay more attention to the problems of teenage alcohol abuse and “heroin cheese” before we devote more of our limited state resources to steroid testing? Imagine if the amount of time Congress, television and news media devoted to alcohol and steroids was proportionate to the actual problem it represents in our high schools.
About the author
Millard writes about anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs and their use and impact in sport and society. He discusses the medical and non-medical uses of anabolic-androgenic steroids while advocating a harm reduction approach to steroid education.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.