Don Hooton, whose teenage son Taylor Hooton used steroids and committed suicide in 2003, wasn't surprised Texas lawmakers pulled the plug on steroid testing Friday.
Courtesy photo
After eight years, the model to subdue steroid use among Texas high school athletes has folded.
On Friday, Texas lawmakers voted to shut down funding for steroid testing after spending more than $10 million. According to results, only a few users and suppliers were caught. The cost was simply too prohibitive.
According to the
Associated Press, the initial 30,000 tests produced just 11 steroid users and the program was scaled down from there. The budget of $3 million annually was cut to $500,000 in 2013.
Now there is no budget. Despite that, Rep. Dan Flynn told AP the program wasn't nearly a bust. He helped write the original testing legislation in 2007.
"We spent a lot of money," he said. "We raised awareness. We saved lives."
Indeed, it's hard to calculate how many Texas high school athletes stopped using knowing they may be tested.
"If we find there's a problem again, we could test again," Flynn told AP.
Don Hooton, whose teenage son Taylor Hooton used steroids and committed
suicide in 2003, wasn't surprised Texas lawmakers pulled the plug on
steroid testing Friday.
Hooton, who started the nationally-recognized Taylor Hooton Foundation, was a key advocate to get the initial
program in place but was critical of its implementation.
"While I am disappointed to see the testing program disappear, its
demise was inevitable," he told the Associated Press.
There were too
many loopholes he said.
"The chances of this program catching one of our Texas high-schoolers
using steroids was somewhere between slim and none," Hooton told AP.
New Jersey and Illinois are the only states with testing programs.
This is somewhat alarming considering a study last summer by the organization Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, showed that use among high school-age teens of synthetic human growth hormone (hGH) has almost doubled since 2012.
See entire story on current steroid studies
According to the latest Partnership Attitude Track Study (PATS), sponsored by MetLife Foundation, 11 percent of teens in grades 9-12 reported using hGH with a prescription, up from five percent two years earlier.
PATS reports a gradual increase in lifetime use of steroids among teens, from five percent in 2009 to seven percent in 2013. The study also shows a correlation between the use of synthetic hGH and steroids.
One of five teens (20 percent) say that at least one friend uses steroids currently and that it is easy to obtain them.
"These new data point to a troubling development among today's teens," said Steve Pasierb, president and CEO of the Partnership of Drug-Free Kids.
"Young people are seeking out and using performance-enhancing substances like synthetic hGH and supplements purporting to contain hGH, hoping to improve athletic performance or body appearance without really knowing what substances they are putting into their bodies."
