What We Can Do to Prevent Steroid Abuse

In 2005, nine football players at Colleyville Heritage High School in Colleyville, Texas, admitted that they had injected anabolic steroids. A three-part, in-depth report conducted by reporters at the Dallas Morning News shortly after the scandal broke suggested that many more high school athletes across the country will be implicated in steroid abuse in the future, and that parents, coaches, and school officials may deny or ignore signs of trouble.

The good news is that steroid abuse among children is declining. According to the 2005 Monitoring the Future study, a survey of drug use among adolescents in U.S. middle and high schools funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), “use of steroids decreased significantly among 8th and 10th graders since peak use in 2000. Among 12th graders, there was a different trend—from 2000 to 2004, … steroid use increased, but in 2005 there was a significant decrease, from 2.5 percent to 1.5 percent. … However, it is difficult to estimate the true prevalence of steroid abuse in the United States because many data sources that measure drug abuse do not include steroids.”

The bad news is that even with a decline in use, if only 1.5 percent of students in secondary education—approximately 16.4 million children—abused steroids, that number would still be 246,000. With stories like Taylor Hooton’s, it is obvious that more work needs to be done to eliminate steroid abuse among our children.

The problem
Steroid abuse may not produce overdose deaths, but it has been linked to heart, liver, kidney, and lung damage that may shorten life, as well as reproductive problems in both males and females. There also are indications that steroids may cause behavioral changes that can lead to psychotic episodes, depression, and aggressive behavior.

According to a 2005 report by the United States Government Accountability Office to the U.S. House of Representatives:

“Our investigators easily obtained anabolic steroids without a prescription through the Internet. After conducting Internet searches, they found hundreds of Web sites offering anabolic steroids commonly used by athletes and bodybuilders for sale … The officials we spoke with told us that most anabolic steroids sold illegally in the United States come from abroad, and that the Internet is the most widely used means of buying and selling anabolic steroids illegally. They also reported that, because of the foreign origin of the steroids and the widespread use of the Internet in steroid trafficking, extensive time and resources are usually required to investigate and prosecute steroid cases. Further, the sheer volume of all types of imports from abroad presents significant challenges in efforts to prevent anabolic steroids from illegally entering the United States.”

Because of limited resources and other drug-related priorities, enforcement of laws governing possession and trafficking of steroids at the federal, state, and local levels has been spotty. In communities, lack of knowledge, denial, or the desire to win may cause some adults to turn a blind eye to steroid abuse. It is time for all adults to get involved in preventing young people from endangering their current and long-term health by using steroids.

What some schools are doing
The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) has issued a report that calls for more stringent oversight of high school athletics. One of its recommendations calls for testing high school athletes for steroids. Three states (New Jersey, Florida, and Texas) already have passed legislation mandating testing of scholastic athletes. Some school districts in Nevada and California have had some form of testing for several years, and legislation is pending in other states to force drug testing.

Not all parents agree that mandatory testing should be done. Steroid testing is costly, and is thought to violate student privacy and compromise parents’ rights to guide their own children. PTA has not come out in favor of drug testing and believes that parents need to decide for themselves whether they feel it is appropriate for their child.

What families, schools, and communities can do
What can families, schools, and communities do about this serious health problem among our young people?

1. Recognize that there is a problem.
Our communities have been in a state of denial regarding anabolic steroid use among our young people. Adults should begin advocating for strong education and prevention policies in schools.  

2. Promote efforts in the community to educate young people.
Parents and anyone who regularly spends time with children, such as teachers, coaches, trainers, and school nurses, need to have accurate information about the reasons for and consequences of anabolic steroid abuse. Parents should support efforts to bring qualified professionals to their communities and schools to present educational workshops on steroids. Faculty professional days, parent sports night, and community-sponsored health and wellness seminars are ideal occasions for such education.

3. Become familiar with the signs of steroid use and the legal consequences for possession and distribution.
Adults should become familiar with the major warning signs of anabolic steroid abuse (see sidebar “Signs and Effects of Steroid Use”). Watch for a combination of several of these indicators in a student. Do not expect a young person to acknowledge their steroid use.

Parents especially should be aware of the legal consequences of steroid possession. Steroids are classified as Schedule III drugs by the Food and Drug Administration. Simple possession carries a maximum of one year in jail and minimum fine of $1,000. The maximum penalty for trafficking is five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

4. Encourage a healthy, steroid-free environment.

Parents should:

• Have open discussions with their children about any frustrations they may be experiencing about their appearance or how they perform at sports. Parents should encourage their children to establish healthy expectations about their bodies. This includes teaching them not to trust gimmicks or quick-fix approaches to enhancing their bodies.
• Encourage hard work, good nutrition and hydration, proper rest, and good coaching as the tools of performance enhancement, rather than injections, pills, powders, and other dietary supplements.
• Withhold funds for purchasing publications, such as muscle magazines, that feature unrealistic images of men and women.
  Monitor their children’s Internet use and restrict their access to Web sites that advertise anabolic steroids or other performance-enhancing substances.
• Help their children access the advice of a physician or registered dietician to develop a plan for weight gain or fat loss.

5. Promote a sports environment that takes the pressure off winning.
Parents and coaches should have regular discussions with kids about setting realistic short-term and long-term goals in sports. Importantly, parents and coaches have to keep sports fun and take the emphasis off winning as the primary goal of sports participation. The needs of children are far more important than the needs of parents or coaches to have championship seasons.

With the help of coaches and athletics directors, parents should let their children know that they have strong objections to steroid use. They should restrict their children’s access to environments where steroid use might occur and to people who are believed to be involved with steroid use.     

6. Educate young athletes in your community on the importance of ethics and morals in sports.
Parents should encourage their children to compete as hard as possible in sports but never to compromise their ethics or morals to win a game. They should emphasize that their children’s ethical and moral conduct as young athletes lays the foundation for their adult ethical behavior.

Parents can play an instrumental role in educating their families and communities about anabolic steroid abuse. The adoption of the aforementioned proactive steps can be useful in reducing and preventing anabolic steroid abuse among our young people.

Bruce B. Svare, PhD, is professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Albany and director of the National Institute for Sports Reform. He is the author of Reforming Sports Before the Clock Runs Out (Bordalice Publishing, 2004) and lectures widely on anabolic steroid abuse. He can be reached at nisr@aol.com.