Editorial: Delay student steroid tests

07/20/2007

San Antonio Express-News

The Legislature was right to mandate steroid testing for high school athletes.

But doing the "right thing" is often more complicated than it seems, and state officials must approach the testing with prudence.

The last thing they want to do is undermine good intentions with an overzealousness that could damage the individuals they are trying to help — the students.

While the legislation called for the testing to begin this year, a complicating factor surfaced when it was learned that legal dietary supplements could trigger positive test results.

Some officials, worried that the testing could taint "clean" athletes as well as steroid users, have called for a delay in the testing that would allow them to address the problem.

University Interscholastic League representatives will meet with state officials, including Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, to decide how to proceed.

Perry supports a delay, while Dewhurst favors testing during the upcoming school year.

The governor is right on this one: If kids should be protected from steroids, they should also be protected from faulty testing that taints them — unfairly and perhaps traumatically — as users.