The State of New Jersey could not find a single high school athlete in the entire state that was using anabolic steroids or any other prohibited performance-enhancing drug (PED) during the previous academic school year. Either New Jersey’s high school football and baseball players are completely “clean” or the State’s high school steroid testing program is an abysmal failure.
Larry White, the Executive Director for the New Jersey Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJIAA), is pleased with the results and the impression that steroid use is not a problem in high school sports. But even White recognized the shortcomings of the testing program.
“We would love to truly make it random because as of right now, when you’re only going to test those schools that make the state tournament, there’s maybe 70 percent of the schools that won’t,” White said. “We know that’s a problem, but with the limited budget that we have and now with costs going up, it’s tough.”
New Jersey was the first state to implement a high school testing program in 2006. It has spent over $1 million testing high school athletes since then to catch teenagers who are using any of the 80 banned substances on the State’s prohibited list of substances. However, its testing budget has always been capped out at $100,000 annually.
One hundred thousand dollars will only go so far. Specifically, it will only cover the testing of approximately 500 samples every year. For this reason, drug testing is limited to random testing of athletes and teams that advance to championship tournaments and games. This means that 70% of the high schools in New Jersey will never be tested at all.
The NJIAA tested 498 male and female student-athletes during the 2017-2018 academic school year. Not a single student-athlete tested positive for anabolic steroids or any other banned substance. During the 2016-2017 academic school year, only one athlete, out of 502 student-athletes, tested positive for a prohibited substance.
New Jersey State Senator Richard Codey has been trying to expand steroid testing of high school athletes for years without success. Additional funding seems unlikely. New Jersey is more likely to follow the lead of Texas and eliminate the high school steroid testing program entirely.
THE LATEST N.J. H.S. STEROID TESTING FIGURES ARE IN. Get the story right here: https://t.co/gPIfR4fHNZ
— Joe Zedalis (@Josephzedalis) September 13, 2018