Texas steroid testing to survive budget cuts
Reported May 26, 2011
Texas is likely to keep testing high school athletes for steroids despite deep budget cuts across the state, but it will likely focus the testing on only a few sports including football, baseball and track, state legislators said Monday.
The state will spend about $1.5 million over the next two years, far below the original $6 million budget when it was created in 2008. The final cost will be determined this week when lawmakers vote on the 2012-13 state budget.
Criticism has been mounting since the program began. More than 50,000 tests yielded fewer than 30 confirmed findings of steroid use.
Rep. Dan Flynn, a Van Republican who helped create the program, said steroid testing was difficult to defend at a time when budget cuts in public education threaten the jobs of tens of thousands of teachers and school workers across Texas.
But Flynn said Monday he believes steroid testing still works as a deterrent. Flynn and Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, chairwoman of the Senate education committee, said the program has a valuable ally in Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who first championed it during his 2006 election campaign and wants to keep it alive.
Flynn and Shapiro said lawmakers are still looking for where to draw the money from but are committed to paying for it.
Dewhurst “believes the program is important and that it saves lives,” spokesman Mike Walz said.
Texas was the third state to begin steroid testing but did it on a far wider scale than anyone else. Every one of the state’s 700,000-plus public school athletes from freshmen female tennis players to senior offensive linemen in football are eligible to be randomly selected, pulled from class and required to submit a urine sample.
In April, the University Interscholastic League released the results of tests conducted last fall. Out of 2,083 tests at 135 schools, one tested positive for steroids. The most tested sports were football for boys and soccer for girls.
Flynn and Shapiro said the program will more tightly-focused to test athletes in sports that have been shown the most likely to encourage steroid use for strength or speed.
“The existence of a program, even a smaller one, is still an effective deterrent,” Walz said.
Steroid testing advocate Don Hooton of Frisco, who started the Taylor Hooton Foundation after his 17-year-old son’s 2003 suicide was linked to steroid use, said a narrower program is more likely to catch cheaters. Hooton was happy to hear the program would survive.
“Make it so a senior offensive lineman has a better chance of getting tested than a freshman female volleyball player,” Hooton said.
Credits: The Associated Press and more details available at: http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/texas-steroid-testing-to-survive-budget-cuts-1493473.html?cxtype=rss_texas