NCAA DRUG TESTING LIMITED

Ephedrine Not Included In Campus Exams

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has been testing for
drugs for 15 years, but it's highly unlikely that those tests would
have detected the use of ephedrine or other supplement-related
substances that have become a focal point since the death of
Northwestern football player Rashidi Wheeler.

According to NCAA drug-testing experts, testing in all sports does not
begin before the academic year or official team practices. Also, they
say NCAA on-campus testing gives priority to diuretics, urine
manipulators and anabolic agents, including steroids, considered to be
long-term performance enhancers. The testing does not test for
ephedrine or other stimulants that are considered to have short-term
effects.

The more extensive test is done if a football team gets into a
championship situation, such as playing in a bowl game. Even then,
less than 20 percent of the team is actually tested.

Prompted by reports that Wheeler had taken a supplement containing
ephedrine, the Food and Drug Administration has launched an
investigation into his death at an "unofficial" practice Aug. 3.

"There was ephedrine and a fatality, so we have to look at that,"
Raymond V. Mlecko, district director of the FDA's Chicago office, told
the Tribune. "What we do is we make an investigation, we get the facts
and send them to Washington to let our experts review them."

Mlecko declined to discuss the specific details of the FDA's
investigation, but said that Northwestern University was
cooperating.

Wheeler's death has triggered a legal and ethical crossfire. How much
blame falls on the extent of emergency precautions, on the use of
ephedrine by Wheeler or on bad luck?

Ephedrine has been linked to at least 80 deaths since 1994, according
to the FDA, and has been targeted in numerous lawsuits against
manufacturers. Studies have found that some people who take ephedrine
experience effects that can lead to a heart attack or stroke.

100 substances banned

The NCAA and the International Olympic Committee have banned the use
of supplements containing ephedrine. The NCAA has increased its list
of banned substances to nearly 100 since starting drug testing in
1986. The NCAA does two types of drug testing--on campus throughout
the academic year, and at championships such as bowl games. Both are
done on a random basis, giving football teams less than 48 hours
notice and usually picking 18 players from each team's list of about
100 players, said Cindy Thomas, program manager for the National
Center for Drug Free Sport, which administers the NCAA's drug tests.

But only in testing before championships does the test expand to
include stimulants or street drugs such as ephedrine, amphetamines,
marijuana, cocaine and a high concentration of caffeine.

The on-campus tests "would not turn up ephedrine," Thomas said. Budget
constraints and a focus on drugs that enhance performance over a
longer period mean that ephedrine "is rarely tested for in any
program," she said. The basic on-campus lab test costs about $100, and
customizing it to seek a stimulant such as ephedrine could add $25 to
$50.

Each school is tested at least once a year, and the championship tests
vary among the bowl and playoff venues each postseason, said Thomas,
who had been the NCAA's assistant director of sports sciences, the
division in charge of drug testing.

Northwestern says it does its own testing in addition to the NCAA's. A
school spokesman offered no details, saying only that the tests were
"in compliance with NCAA regulations."

NCAA policy calls for a one-year suspension for anyone who tests
positive for a banned substance. But with fewer than one in four
players facing the possibility of getting tested in the drug-detection
net, and with loopholes that don't capture substances with short-term
effects, NCAA drug-testing clearly cannot catch everyone.

Of 5,040 Division I football players tested in the 1999-2000 academic
year, 33 tested positive, 11 of those in bowl and championship
testing, said Dr. Arnold Mazur, an NCAA drug testing-drug education
subcommittee member.

Not only a local problem

Shortly after Wheeler collapsed and died, a team trainer obtained
containers of Ultimate Punch and Xenedrine, both supplements that
contain ephedrine, from an unidentified player and handed them over to
Evanston police. The police, in turn, provided them to the Cook County
Medical Examiner's Office.

Dr. Edmund Donoghue, the medical examiner, said blood tests confirmed
ephedrine in Wheeler's system but added that the substance did not
contribute to the player's death. He said Wheeler, a lifelong
asthmatic, died from a "classic case of exercised-induced asthma."

Donoghue said he could not determine exactly how the ephedrine got
into Wheeler's system, but said the amount detected was consistent
with taking the recommended dosage of a dietary supplement like
Ultimate Punch.

The use of banned substances, however, is clearly not a localized
problem. Larry Naifeh, associate athletic director at the University
of Oklahoma, last year's national college football champion, said his
school and the Big 12 Conference each do random testing in addition to
the NCAA's.

He would not specify what substances are tested for but said testing
is done by a firm independent from the school. Unlike the NCAA, the
school does not suspend an athlete for a year until a third positive
test, Naifeh said. The first positive leads to notification of the
athletic director and the player's parents and required counseling. A
second positive means suspension for the next game.

Boston College's drug testing is similar, said NCAA subcommittee
member Mazur, who is a staff physician and coordinator of drug
education and drug testing at the school. The athletic department and
parents are notified and counseling ordered after the first positive
test; a two-week suspension during regular-season games follows a
second positive; and a one-year suspension comes after the third, Mazur said.

While the NCAA and individual tests "are very good," Mazur said, "the
difficulty is that they look at very recent use. Anabolic steroids can
be traced for months, but many other substances are metabolized in the
body and gone within a couple of days."

In the case of ephedrine, which is subject to testing only in the
championship testing, he said, "most tests pick up what was used that
day or in the past few days."

In 1994 Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education
Act, creating a new category of products called dietary supplements.
Before the law was enacted, manufacturers and suppliers of nutritional
supplements had to prove their safety claim to the FDA before the
supplements could be marketed. But the new category left the FDA with
virtually no control over supplements. Under the law the FDA can only
intervene after a product has been shown to be harmful.

Manufacturers of the supplements maintain the products are safe if
used properly, and some manufacturers include voluntary warning labels
about the potential health risks.

"University sports entertainment is a billion-dollar industry that
pushes athletes to the edge of the performance envelope," said
professor Charles Yesalis of Penn State University, who has researched
and written extensively on steroid use and drug testing. "When you do
that, dangerous things can happen.

"We've created this wonderful thing called sports. . . . And its
counterpart is a terrible monster."