Boys and girls in all sports, from football to tennis to cross country, have been randomly selected.
The results so far have found little to confirm fears that steroid use is a rampant problem. When the first 10,000 tests found only four positive results, critics declared the two-year program a waste of time and money.
Now state lawmakers must decide whether to keep the program chugging along, scale it down or eliminate it. The 2009 legislative session starts Tuesday.
Although the program’s $6 million price tag is a mere .004 percent of the $167 billion state budget, the money could be an easy target for lawmakers strapped for cash in a struggling economy.
The legislator who sponsored the testing bill in 2007 calls it an “incredible success.”
The point of testing was to act as a deterrent against steroid use, not catch teens using drugs, said Rep. Dan Flynn, a Republican from Van.
“We don’t have a bunch of pelts hanging on the wall,” Flynn said. “The success is that we haven’t had a lot of positive tests.”
According to a University Interscholastic League report to lawmakers on Dec. 1, the first 10,117 tests produced only the four confirmed cases of steroid use. Two of the drugs identified were the anabolic steroid boldenone and a steroid called methylandrostandiol.
Another 22 cases were deemed “positive” results because students broke testing rules. They either refused to provide a urine sample, had unexcused absences the day they were selected, or left the testing area without approval. A positive test brought a 30-day suspension from play for the first offense.
The National Center for Drug Free Sport tested athletes at 195 schools between February and June 2008, covering 12 sports. Football (3,380) and girls’ volleyball (835) were the sports most often tested. The UIL will update test results next month.
Republican state Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston, has been a vocal critic of the tests, calling them a “colossal waste of taxpayer money” that could be better spent battling recreational drug and alcohol use among teens.
With less than a full year of testing completed, Dewhurst said it’s too early to determine if major changes should be made.
Testing is “deterring our young people from putting their lives at risk or wrecking their bodies through the use of illegal steroids,” Dewhurst said.
The program’s cost compared to its findings could decide its future.
The UIL recommends the state continue bearing the cost. Its report studied financing options, including increasing fees on the 1,300 member schools and a so-called “ticket tax” on the price of admission to games.
Keeping the current $6 million program would cost each school an extra $4,709 every two years. For the smallest schools, often in rural areas, that would be a 500-percent increase.
The report said a ticket tax would be unreliable because the UIL cannot accurately estimate how many tickets will be sold. Many schools only sell tickets to football and basketball, with fans allowed to watch other sports for free.
It would also be difficult to account for the large amounts of cash that change hands at Texas high schools on a typical Friday night during football season, the report said.
Even if Texas continues testing, D.W. Rutledge, executive director of the Texas High School Coaches Association, said the early results and the small number of athletes caught cheating showed steroid use is not widespread.
“If one kid is taking steroids, it’s a problem,” Rutledge said. “It’s not the epidemic that people feared it was.”
