Steriod Use In Youth Sports

A 2006 survey by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan found that 2.7 percent of high school seniors reported trying steroids at least one time. According to a substance abuse and mental health report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, or NIDA, most anabolic steroid users are male, at 2.5 percent versus 0.6 percent of girls. Just like adults, youth athletes use steroids to enhance performance and improve their physical appearance.

Identification

Steroids are a class of drugs that when prescribed legally are used for treating conditions related to hormone deficiencies and diseases that cause degeneration of muscle mass. When you read about steroid abuse in the media, they're referring to anabolic-androgenic steroids, AAS, which are synthetically produced versions of naturally occurring hormones. According to NIDA, anabolic refers to muscle building and androgenic refers to increased male sexual characteristics.

Steroid Use

It might seem like steroid use is at an all-time high thanks to the outing of famous athletes using the endurance-enhancing substances in recent years. World champion track and field star Marion Jones was stripped of her Olympic medals in 2007 after getting caught using steroids. Baseball MVP Barry Bonds was accused of lying to a grand jury under oath about his steroid use in 2008. But "Monitoring the Future," an annual survey by NIDA, found that while steroid use remained stable for eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders from 2007 to 2008, use significantly declined since 2001. As of 2008, 1.4 percent of eighth- and 10th-graders and 2.2 percent of 12th-graders had ever used steroids.

Why Students Use

In a 2005 article in "USA Today," reporter Seth Livingstone interviewed high school athletes in an effort to understand why students were drawn to steroids. They revealed that use of performance-enhancing drugs occurred openly in locker rooms, weight rooms and even school lunchrooms and coaches were aware of steroid use among students. While the athletes considered steroid use cheating that gives players an unfair advantage, student athletes considered the benefits worth it.

Where Students Get Steroids

A 1988 study published in the "Journal of the American Medical Association" found that 6.6 percent of 12-grade male students had used AAS, two-thirds of whom started using when there were 16. Twenty-one percent of steroid users at that time reported getting steroids from a health professional. Today, the primary supplier of steroids to kids is the Internet and health food stores. According to a 2004 article by the Office of Diversion Control, some people are taking dietary supplements that act like steroids. Some of these products, sold at health food stores and online, have the same medical consequences as steroids. In 2010, "The New York Times" reported that one nutrition company based in California pled guilty to selling dietary supplements illegally spiked with steroids. A Massachusetts-based company recalled 17 dietary supplements because the Food and Drug Administration claimed they contained undeclared steroids.

Steroid Testing

In 2006, New Jersey became the first state to require steroid testing for high school athletes, and now other states are setting out to do the same. In 2007, Texas governor Rick Perry signed into law a bill requiring random steroid testing for public high school athletes. Florida began randomly testing high school athletes for steroid abuse in 2007.