Most sports organizations regard mandatory testing as the solution to deterring athletes from using illegal or performance-enhancing drugs.
The NCAA conducts year-round testing on approximately 11,000 student-athletes and screens approximately 2,500 student-athletes at championship events.
But the tests the NCAA orders don’t fully address the problem because they are cheap and basic.
“The drug testing that the NCAA does is fairly minimal,” said Dr. Don Catlin, CEO of Anti-Doping Research and founder of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory.
“They almost never do any serious testing, which would include things like for erythropoietin or growth hormone or testosterone. They are just not set up to do it, probably because it is too expensive.”
UCLA Athletics does the bulk of its own year-round testing, since the NCAA’ tests athletes no more than twice a year.
While testing plays a role in UCLA’s anti-doping program, drug education is a much larger component of it.
“I really do think education is really important,” said Petrina Long, senior associate athletic director, who oversees the UCLA Drug Education and Testing Program.
“When you talk about performance-enhancing drugs and some of the things that are in some supplements and the synthetic marijuana, when you educate kids about some of the permanent effects it has on your body, it makes the immediate appearance of gain really look different.”
Teams meet at least once a year with a trained medical professional. Long believes this drug education is especially effective in teaching student-athletes about the growing number of over-the-counter supplements that contain banned substances.
“You can buy things over the counter at GNC that are not properly labeled and have all kinds of things,” she said. “I think young people are a tad naive to think, “˜If I can purchase it at a legitimate store than it must be fine,’ and that is not true at all.”
Whether a drug education program is a more effective method of discouraging athletes from taking illegal substances than mandatory testing is still unproven.
For now, collegiate drug-testing programs seem to be working.
In a survey conducted by the NCAA in January 2012, approximately 51 percent of questioned student-athletes indicated, “they strongly agree or agree that drug testing by individual colleges has deterred college athletes from using drugs.”
More than 55 percent said “they strongly agree or agree that drug testing by the NCAA has deterred college athletes from using drugs.”
Dr. Anthony Butch, director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory, the agency that performs drug tests for the NCAA, said he does not think drug testing is the answer to reducing the number of athletes taking performance-enhancing substances, but that it is necessary nonetheless.
“You have to have an obvious penalty for breaking the rules,” Butch said.
Either way, working to reduce the number of athletes taking drugs is the ultimate goal.
“The problem of drugs in sports is that it is not going to go away forever,” Dr. Catlin said.
“They really do work and if you want drug-free sports you have to keep pounding away and trying to do something.”