PREVENTING ATHLETIC ABUSE

Random testing, strict policies and severe penalties aim to prevent
college athletes from getting involved with illegal drugs

The United States Congress in March 2005 asked several Major League
Baseball players to testify before a congressional committee
investigating the presence of steroids in baseball. At the meeting,
former Baltimore Orioles and Texas Rangers star Rafael Palmeiro sat
stone-faced and wagged his finger at the panel of Congressmen, "I have
never used steroids. Period."

Five months later, in August 2005, baseball officials suspended
Palmeiro for 10 days for testing positive for steroids. Palmeiro's
positive test and subsequent suspensions raised eyebrows as to the
extent of steroid use in baseball and in other sports.

In the world of college sports, the National Collegiate Athletic
Association has extremely strict provisions surrounding illegal street
drugs and performance-enhancing drugs. At N.C. State, team coaches and
university officials work tirelessly to help student-athletes avoid
illegal drugs of all kinds.

Is There a Problem?

Privacy laws prevent NCAA and school officials from releasing the
names of student-athletes who test positive for illegal drugs. So the
names of disgraced college athletes will never make it to the news.

But, according to Mary Wilfert, associate director of education
outreach for health and safety for the NCAA, that doesn't mean a drug
problem exists in college sports.

"Is there a drug problem in college sports? There's always drug use in
college sports," Wilfert said. "It depends on how you define
'problem.' Any drug use is a problem. How widespread is the usage is
another issue. The majority of athletes do not use drugs."

Several State coaches and players echoed Wilfert's sentiments about
drug use in college. Both women's tennis coach Hans Olsen and baseball
coach Elliott Avent said college sports do not have a pervasive drug
problem.

"If you have college-aged kids, young people, they are able to make
decisions on their own for the first time, so maybe there is some
[usage]," Olsen said. "There is some susceptibility to drugs because
of the age, but I don't think it's a large portion of student athletes."

Avent said he hasn't seen evidence of a problem in college sports, but
he's heard from others of problems in the past.

"Three or four years ago, there was a widespread mumbling among
[baseball] coaches that several [baseball] teams had problems using
steroids," Avent said. "Nothing specific, but just mumblings --
whether or not it was accurate, I don't know. It was just hearsay."

Junior baseball player Joe Florio transferred to State this year after
spending a year at Indian River Community College in Ft. Pierce, Fla.

Florio said a "large majority" of the baseball players in junior
college take performance-enhancing drugs because the institutions do
not have funding for the drug tests.

"A lot of them are on drugs, and they don't really test for anything,"
he said. "There's larger usage there than here because kids are afraid
to test positive here."

Arlene Tharrington is a lecturer in the physical education department
at NCSU. Tharrington is a certified strength and conditioning
specialist. She said the motivation for college athletes to use
performance-enhancing drugs is not always very strong.

"Most collegiate athletes are not going to the pro level," Tharrington
said. "The incentive to take drugs at the collegiate level may not be
as strong. If you have the potential to be a professional athlete,
then there's an added incentive."

Associate Athletics Director for Compliance Jon Fagg said he does not
think there is a drug problem in college sports. He said it would be
naive to assume nobody uses performance-enhancing drugs in college
because "in any society, there are groups of people who use things
they're not supposed to use."

"I call our department a small town," Fagg said. "We have about 600
athletes. In a town that size, you're going to have some percentage of
the population do about anything. I'm sure there are some on street
drugs and some on performance-enhancing drugs. I'd like to think the
thought they could be tested at any time is a deterrent to that use."

The Rules of the Game

According to Wilfert, the NCAA doesn't ban specific drugs; rather, the
NCAA bans entire classes of drugs, allowing specific exceptions. The
NCAA bans all stimulants but allows the use of pseudoephedrine, which
is a decongestant used in Sudafed and other cold medicines.

She said the banned-drug list and test program was initially developed
in 1986 based on what the United States Olympic Committee used at the
time. The list is reviewed twice per year, and adjustments are made to
the list if necessary.

"We don't prioritize what drugs are banned; we ban all of them,"
Wilfert said. "If someone's cheating, they get removed from the sport.
If there's an addiction, perhaps he or she should be withheld from the
sport but with an assessment and intervention."

Exceptions to the rules are allowed for medical purposes, as long as
proper documentation is presented and on file.

"Student-athletes are students and may need drugs for health reasons
such as Ritalin," Wilfert said. "Ritalin is banned, but if a student
shows documentation for a need, then it's OK. We have to protect
health and safety while assuring a level playing field."

Individual campuses also conduct drug tests that are independent of
the NCAA, according to Wilfert, which is where Fagg's compliance
office comes into play.

The compliance office has a contract with a drug-testing company. NCSU
student-athletes are randomly tested all throughout the year for both
street drugs and performance-enhancing drugs.

Athletes are picked through a computer-program lottery that randomly
draws student ID numbers, which can be sorted by team, according to
Fagg.

"We can also test on reasonable suspicion -- if someone's tested
positive in the past and we want to check, or if someone is exhibiting
some of the behaviors associated with drugs," he said. "It doesn't
have to be random, but it usually is."

Fagg said there are varying penalties for positive tests. A first
positive test for a performance-enhancing drug results in a suspension
for a "significant amount of time." If the positive test is for a
street drug such as marijuana or cocaine, Fagg said an intervention
will take place.

"Maybe you're a young person who went to a party and made a mistake,
but you got caught just trying it -- or maybe there are more serious
issues, and we try to meet that circumstance with professionals," he
said.

When asked if any State athletes had ever been penalized for taking
performance-enhancing drugs, Fagg could neither confirm nor deny any
such results because of student privacy laws. But he said, while drugs
are not a rampant problem in college, some use isn't uncommon.

"At any school you go to, I'm sure the answer to that is yes," he
said.

In order to prevent false positive tests, Fagg said athletes must
register any kind of medication being taken with the sports medicine
staff.

"If someone is taking Sudafed, that can cause a positive test," he
said. "But we'll have it in our records that the person is taking it
with doctors' orders or whatever the case may be. Inhalers for asthma
can cause a positive drug test, but as long as we have proper
documentation [its OK]. Our athletes are told they should never put
anything in their bodies our sports medicine staff doesn't know about."

Vitamins and Supplements

Players and coaches are split on whether or not they think athletes
should even be allowed to take vitamins and supplements -- substances
that are perfectly legal and obtainable from stores like CVS, Eckerd
and GNC.

Freshman women's tennis player Daria Petrovic said vitamins are a good
thing and necessary to help athletes stay healthy.

Olsen said vitamins and supplements are OK to use for medical reasons
but not for simply increasing muscle mass.

"We have some of our players who are deficient in certain areas --
certain vitamins or minerals could help add to a balance that they are
missing," he said. "Working through the training room, anytime we find
an awareness of that kind of situation, legal vitamins and supplements
are a good thing. In terms of just using supplements to bulk up, we
don't do that sort of thing."

"That sort of thing" is also prohibited by the NCAA, according to
Wilfert.

"We have very strict restrictions on what supplements schools can
provide," she said. "We don't restrict use; we restrict what is
provided. They can't give out creatine, and athletes can't get more
than 30 percent of their calories from protein. Schools can provide
supplements that provide calories and fluids, but they cannot provide
performance-enhancing supplements."

Florio said he's used protein shakes during the off-season, but he
doesn't use them in-season, and he doesn't take vitamins or other
supplements.

"Even if you do, we have to take it to our trainer to make sure it's
OK to use -- to make sure it doesn't have any banned substances in
it," he said.

He added it's hard to say what's OK to use and what should be
illegal.

"Look at a protein shake -- it's there to make your muscles bigger,
but it's legal," Florio said. "There's a gray area, for sure. Protein
shakes do help you out, but there's a big difference between shakes
and steroids. Steroids are just harmful. Guys get hurt because they've
taken steroids, but protein shakes will never do that to you."

Fagg said the key to making sure athletes do not use banned substances
is to make sure they are educated properly about the what's really in
legal supplements.

"Occasionally, we have people who want to go to retail stores and buy
supplements, but we try to discourage those things," he said. "A lot
of those products aren't regulated by the government, so they don't
have to be truthful on their labels. It's not illegal to take them,
but they could contain a banned substance."

The Effects of Illegal Drugs

Tharrington said putting synthetic substances into the body is a
dangerous practice because the athlete can never be sure of the
effects on his or her body.

"That's going to very much depend on the type of drug they're taking
and the quantity they're taking," she said. "The effects will vary
from person to person. Any time you put a substance into your body,
it's going to have some effect. So, my stance is: Don't do it."

She added the body can only handle so much of certain substances, such
as steroids, human growth hormone and testosterone. The body naturally
produces those sorts of things, and it is "very dangerous" to put
additional amounts into the body, she said.

"Those substances have a very powerful effect on the body,"
Tharrington said. "The body only processes so much."

When it comes to deciding whether or not to take a
performance-enhancing substance, Avent said it's a matter of where
each person draws his or her own line for morals and ethics.

"Convincing yourself you're doing the right thing -- that's how people
get by," he said. "It's about whether you can live with yourself. The
honest guys that draw the line straight down the letter of the law --
they aren't rewarded. They see all these guys doing things outside the
law, and they're being rewarded."

"As long as our society continues to reward people who do unethical,
immoral or illegal acts, people will do it. People will continue to
justify it in their minds. Only until these people are 'villainized'
will this kind of stuff stop. In today's society, it's not happening."