Mike Celizic

The question isn’t why kids take steroids. Rather, it is why the great majority of teens aspiring to be professional athletes don’t take steroids, and why we do virtually nothing to attempt to stop the minority who do.

Statistics vary but the latest national survey of steroid use among teens reports that 3.5 percent of high school seniors admitted to using steroids at least once. That doesn’t sound like a lot. But it’s a 67 percent increase over the 1991 and a 17 percent increase over figures cited by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in 1999.

So, while the numbers look small, they’re rising rapidly, and that’s an indictment of an education system that would rather invent reasons why it can’t -– or won’t -- do anything about it than find ways to stop it.

The Olympics tests for steroids and every other performance-enhancing drug. Pro sports leagues test. Colleges test. High schools, with just a few exceptions, don’t test. And if you don’t test for steroids, you are telling kids to go ahead and use them, because they won’t get caught.

If you don’t test for steroids, you are telling kids to go ahead and use them, because they won’t get caught.

You can lecture kids all you want about the dangers of steroids, about the incredible shrinking testicles and acne blooms and possible liver damage down the road. There are always going to be some, just as there are some athletes at every stage of competition, who are willing to take the risks if they can see a clear reward.

Major League Baseball is experiencing a public relations nightmare because, until last year, it didn’t test for any drugs, including steroids. Because it didn’t test, players –- and no one knows how many –- used those drugs as well as human growth hormone to get bigger and stronger. Records fell. Kids watched. And they imitated their heroes.

A recent Associated Press story on the subject of kids and steroids quoted various high-school officials giving what, for many, is the standard excuse: They can’t afford the $50 it costs for each steroid test. For other school systems, including those in New York and New Jersey, civil rights are cited by the few administrators who will even talk on the record about the subject.

But in the same AP report, schools that don’t test for steroids do test athletes for other drugs such as marijuana and cocaine. The tests for so-called recreational drugs are relatively inexpensive, but if you’re going to test for drugs that don’t enhance performance, you’re just playing to the bleachers: “Look, we’re testing the athletes for drugs.” But you’re not testing them for the drugs that matter in this regard, the ones that equate with cheating.

Until we do test, the numbers of kids taking the drugs will continue to rise, because the upside of cheating –- especially when you can’t get caught -– is incredible.

Hero status and a Hummer
We celebrate people who are big and strong and fast and skillful, idolize them, buy the products they endorse, dress like them, talk like them, worship the socks they sweat in.

It isn’t something we invented, another product of modern decadence. The Greeks idolized athletes and warrior-heroes and were obsessed with physical appearance. Win at the ancient Olympic Games for your city-state and you were set for life, as big a star in that world as athletes are today.

We devote magazines and large sections of our newspapers and television networks and clear-channel radio stations to recording their every move and dissecting their games, talents and lives.

FACT FILE Is your child on steroids? Anywhere from 3 to 11 percent of high school students, mostly boys, have used steroids, surveys show. Over time, steroids can stunt kids’ growth, shrink testicles and cause heart and liver damage. Parents can be on the look-out for the following symptoms of steroid use: — Rapid, improbable gains in muscle and weight — Aggressive behavior known as ‘roid rage’ — Mood swings — Worsening acne, often on the chest and back — Breast enlargement in boys — Facial hair growth in girls — Deepened voice in girls If you suspect your child is using steroids, consult your family doctor.

And we pay them millions upon millions of dollars so that they live like feudal lords, with the exception that they owe allegiance to no one.

Who wouldn’t want a piece of that? What kid with a competitive itch and above-average coordination wouldn’t want to get all of that, especially if it involves playing a game in public and being allowed -– encouraged even –- to spit and scratch without losing social style points.

If you ever played sports as a kid and had any degree of talent you stood in the driveway shooting free throws. You were playing in the Final Four, the national championship game, for State U., 50,000 people screaming in the stands, millions watching on television, a dozen or more of the most beautiful women on campus cheering for you on the sidelines.

You were down a point with no time left. Sink both foul shots and your team wins, you’re a hero, you get drafted in the NBA lottery, you buy a Hummer and a Porsche and an Escalade and live in a house so big you need a golf cart to get around in it.

Or you spend every quarter you can cadge at the batting cages, and now it’s the bottom of the ninth in the World Series. You’re playing for the Yankees and you’re down three, two outs, bases loaded, the game’s greatest relief pitcher on the mound. You take him deep and two weeks later sign a $40-million contract to endorse hamburgers and show up in People magazine with a super model on each arm.

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