Florida is in the right path of creating clean, disciplined athletes with their new program to test high school students for alcohol and illegal drug use.

Athletes in the Olympics and Major League Baseball won’t be the only ones submitting urine samples to authorities. The program is being funded by a U.S. Department of Education grant

From Palm Beach Post:

High school athletes will have to submit to random testing to detect the use of alcohol as well as illegal and widely abused prescription drugs under a policy preliminarily approved Wednesday by the Palm Beach County School Board.

If the board gives final approval next week, the same company that tests district employees for drug use would randomly test this season’s baseball and softball players at six high schools.

The test for anabolic steroid use will not be available initially. This is because the Florida High School Athletic association was already testing for steroids when the grant was made and funding had already run out. NMS Management Services Inc., the company who would do the tests, is willing to add steroid testing on the program later on though.

Many school officials support the idea of testing the athletes. This will work by assigning a number per athlete and numbers will be chosen randomly. The corresponding students to the numbers picked will be the ones tested. Just as Ron Hoyt, West Boca Raton High’s softball coach, had said, the new policy will serve as a warning to students who plan on using drugs or steroids since they know that there will be consequences in doing so. When caught for the first time, an athlete will be banned from joining any games for 10 days, although he or she can practice with the team. When caught for the second time, the athlete will be removed from his or her team and will be prohibited from joining any competitions for an entire year. The main goal of the program is to make sure that the students are safe, and that they develop some discipline and knowledge with what is really going on in sports.

James Nigel Stephens is one of the reasons why the public has this negative perception of anabolic steroids. You see, this guy committed a despicable act and blame it on anabolic steroids! These criminals would blame everything else, except themselves, to avoid prison time.

Stephens, from Fairfield in southwest Sydney, pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated sexual assault and aggravated detention of a person for advantage over the incident at Waterloo, in Sydney.

Stephens got 14 years for what Australian media call “rampage of rape’ on a topless waitress on January 14, 2007. It was reported that Stephens attended a bucks’ party where the 22-year-old victim had worked. Stephens, then 18-year-old, stole her keys and later let himself into the car’s boot.

During sentencing submissions last month, Stephens’ attorney had declared his client had probably been under the influence of a “very, very nasty cocktail” of alcohol and steroids. Judge Michael Finnane of the New South Wales District Court, however, did not accept that as evidence.

“I must emphasize that I have no acceptable evidence that he drank to excess or that he consumed anabolic steroids,” the judge said.

The judge described to the court the nature of Stephens’ crime.

“What he did was horrifying in its cruelty,” he said.

“It was planned and calculated.

“He hid himself in the boot of her car and when she was alone, emerged suddenly, grabbed her from behind, threatening her with a plastic fork pressed to her neck, causing her to scream with fear.”

The teenager then forced the woman to pull over and raped her several times.

“Some of the offences had a sadistic quality to them and he showed, during the time of committing these offences, an attitude of contempt for the complainant and utter indifference to her suffering,” he said.

Stephens recorded parts of his assault on the victim.