IN NEED OF A PLAN B TO DETER YOUNG ATHLETES FROM DRUG USE

As much as many of us abhor drug testing in principle, with drug use
exploding around us we accept the premise - I did, at least - that
drug testing at the high school level was a necessary deterrent to drug use.

But a study released today in the Journal of Adolescent Health
challenges the deeply held, or at least hopeful, notion that high
school drug testing is a deterrent.

According to the study, these drug tests may not be the deterrent we
expect them to be.

Even as state high school associations across the nation begin to
implement programs to test athletes for drug use, Dr. Linn Goldberg,
the head of the division of health promotion and sports medicine at
Oregon Health & Science University and a co-author of the study,
raises the sobering possibility that these tests do not deter
athletes from using drugs.

"The big thing that people say is you got to give kids a reason not
to use drugs, and drug testing is a reason," Goldberg said Tuesday
from his home in Oregon. "That's not what we found. You can look at
testing as a way to catch an early addiction, but as a deterrent,
which this study was looking at, we didn't find any evidence that
testing was a deterrent."

The researchers tested for all illicit drugs, including steroids. The
two-year study of 11 Oregon high schools, based solely on
questionnaires given to student-athletes, found that random drug and
alcohol testing did not reliably keep student-athletes from using.