Drug Testing
An article from cnn.com about drug testing.
It seems a few football players at a Division III school were arrested with a variety of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, and steroids. The local DA threatened to extend the investigation to all football players, with a stated focus on steroids.
Naturally, the school suggests some self-policing, announcing that all 100 football players will be tested for street drugs (marijuana and cocaine), but will only randomly test 25 football players for steroids.
Any thoughts on why, with the DA worried about steroids, the school will only be randomly testing 25 football players for steroids, while testing them all for street drugs?
Any guess as to which test is more expensive?
–CT
February 9th, 2007 at 8:30 am
It would seem rather than what tests cost (which may be moot if those costs are allocated to different paying parties), that the real question is whether Illegal Recreational Drug use by a few players can legally be extended into an invasive testing regime for all players?
And whether legally that testing can be expanded from Illegal Recreational Drug Testing by testing for Disallowed/Illegal Performance Enhancing Drugs among the whole athlete group?
This DA should be taken to task by the faculty and by the student’s themselves. It is a shame that the School has caved to pressure to do ANY testing as part of a “fishing expedition.”
The school could be seen as in violation of their athletes’ rights by testing without cause.
A DA does not gain license for “fishing expeditions” for infraction “B” among a DA determined target group simply by having a small subset of the target group implicated for infraction “A”.
An interesting case, which as summarized smacks of civil right violations right & left.
For what it is worth a standard Illegal Drug urine test is quite cheap, whereas the steroid testing is complex lab work, and much more expensive per tested individual.
Steve W
February 9th, 2007 at 8:49 am
I didn’t make clear that two out of hundreds of UW-Stout players, and one former player (out of perhaps thousands of former players) have been charged with both Recreational and/or Performance Enhancing drugs.
Why hundreds & thousands? Because the proposed testing is to be up scaled in Autumn to include all student athletes at University of Wisconsin – Stout.
The whole thing reads as a “performance for media” by the UW, as student athletes had already been part of a testing program.
Steve W
February 9th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Steve,
Thanks for the comments here and elsewhere.
I just threw away my copy of the NCAA’s drug testing program, and I wish I hadn’t. As the article points out, all athletes are tested at the championship level. I am certain that D1 athletes are subject to random drug testing during other times of the season. I don’t know if this applies to DIII athletes.
While I wholeheartedly agree this is “performance for media”, the reason I point out the random testing above is this: if athlets are subject to random drug testing by the ncaa, it is hard for me to believe futher tests (by the school) are illegal. I also agree that the broader issue of whether a drug test can be required by the ncaa (or as a condition of employment) is interesting and we could certainly question (and should) its civil rights status.
I “have a friend” who has been tested both as an athlete, and recently as an application for employment. In both cases, my friend knew 24 hours in advance that they would be tested (I don’t believe the employer is testing for steroids!). The reaction to the test was given by the employer is that it was administered much more strictly – “nervewracking” compared to the NCAA testing, having actual controls in place for the employment test.
One could wonder how the UW-Stout test will be administered, and if the details will be part of the “performance”. Doubtful.
Be all this as it may, lest my students miss the simpler point I was hoping to make, and which you quite correctly pointed out, is that even when creating something as nebulous and “media performance”, firms (or universities) will respond to the prices of inputs.
While we could argue about how valuable the steroids tests are for this “peformance” (relative to the value of the street drug tests), the fact that a steroid test is 3-4 times more expensive than a street drug test is part of the story.