THE UNIVERSITY DARLY KANSAN
ERIDAY JANUARY 19, 2007
NEWS
5A
DRUG TESTING (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
Kansas'policy
The NCAA require individual institutions to test their athletes, but most Division I institutions have a testing program in place.
Percentage of Division I athletes who reported using drugs
Drug 1993 1997 2001 2005
Amphetamines 2.1 2.5 3.2 4.0
Anabolic steroids 1.9 1.2 1.6 1.2
Ephedrine N/A 3.0 2.4 2.4
Nutritional Supplements N/A N/A 46.0 33.4
Alcohol 86.3 79.2 80.5 74.7
Cocaine/crack 0.6 1.2 1.8 2.0
Marijuana/hashish 17.6 26.4 26.3 17.3
Even though the NCAA, Big 12 and Kansas employ the same Kansas City, Mo., firm, Drug Free Sport, to administer drug tests, the penalties for the same offense uncovered by the same company for violating the same NCAA rules depends on who paid for the test. NCAA rules don't require member institutions to report failed drug tests, and schools set their own penalties. Penalties for athletes who fail Kansas' drug tests vary depending on whether they are a first-time or repeat offender.
N/A indicates questions were not asked about that drug in a given year.
Source: NCAA 2005 Survey of Member Institutions
For first-time offenders like Swanson, the athlete's coach, sport supervisor, team physician, director of sports medicine and staff athletic trainer are notified, as well as the athlete's parents and/or spouse. The athlete also enters a mandatory counseling and rehabilitation program and is tested once every 40 days for the next year.
Catherine Odson/KANSAN
Hassan Johnson, a former Kansas football player, said he was never tested. Johnson was in his fourth year when he left the team before the 2006 season.
Second-time offenders face the same penalties and are suspended from 10 percent of scheduled games or two games, whichever is less.
Third-time offenders are permanently suspended and lose their athletic scholarships and financial aid.
Almost everyone's testing
According to a 2005 NCAA survey, 91 percent of Division I-A schools have their own drug-testing program. The Kansas athletics department began drug testing 10 years ago and has introduced changes since then.
Magee said the department was changing its program so athletes were tested at least twice by their junior year. The first test would be given soon after they arrive on campus. Although these procedures are already written into the policy, some athletes slip through the cracks.
Matt Baty, a Kansas baseball player who finished his eligibility last season, said he was tested only once during his four years at Kansas. His test occurred soon after he arrived on campus his freshman year.
Magee said he was not surprised some athletes had gone through their careers without ever being tested, but said that should not continue to happen with the changes.
Why they test
Kay Hawes, director of media relations with Drug Free Sport, said most colleges tested their own athletes to put a stop to drug use before the NCAA found out.
"One reason to do it is to avoid the public embarrassment of having somebody test positive in an NCAA test," said Hawes, who didn't mention the NCAA's stiffer penalties that could sideline KU players.
Kansas athletes are subject to random tests at any time during the aca
demic year by the NCAA, the Big 12 or the department. Drug Free Sport administers the test for all three entities and charges $150 per test, $175 if street drugs are included. The NCAA now tests athletes during the summer months, which started last summer with football and baseball players. Frank Uryasz, president of Drug Free Sport, said more sports would be tested this coming summer.
Magee said the NCAA and Big 12 usually tested athletes chosen at random on campus two or three times per year and during Big 12 championships and NCAA postseason play. The NCAA only tests for street drugs during championship competition but always tests for performance-enhancing drugs. During NCAA random drug testing, a school's football team is always tested and then another sport is chosen based on the likelihood of anabolic steroid use in that sport.
Who gets tested
Magee said the University tested about 60 new athletes in the first few months of the school year and about 15 to 20 athletes each month after that. Drug Free Sport chooses which athletes are tested using a number generator that randomly selects athletes from a squad list.
For Kansas' drug test, athletes are informed the day before. With the
NCAA, athletes are called early the same day. If an athlete does not show for an NCAA screening, it counts as a failed drug test.
During the drug test, an athlete is taken to a bathroom
who told him they were able to cheat the system.
Uryasz said athletes have tried to cheat by bringing in someone else's urine, manipulating the sample by adding compounds to the urine to make it difficult to test or by overhydrating and diluting the test.
by a Drug Free Sport proctor and must follow precise instructions with the proctor watching.
"Those attempts are not successful if the validator is doing his job," Urvasz said.
When athletes over-hydrate and water down results, they have to stay until they are able to provide a concentrated sample. Urysz said.
Magee said the department had never caught a KU athlete foiling a drug test.
"If you've ever tried going to the bathroom when somebody is watching, it's kind of hard to do."
"They understand it's going to be a situation where they really can't cheat," he said.
The urine sample is screened for all of the classes of drugs banned by the NCAA during a KU drug test or an NCAA championship drug test, including stimulants such as methamphetamine, cocaine, anabolic steroids, diuretics, growth hormones and street drugs, such as marijuana. During a Big 12 or random NCAA test, they test only for performance-enhancing drugs such as steroids. Drug Free Sport also screens for urine manipulators and masking agents used to skew drug testing during all tests.
"If you've ever tried going to the bathroom when somebody is watching, it's kind of hard to do," Baty, the baseball player, said.
Despite the presence of a proctor,
Swanson said he's had teammates.
What athletes use
MATT BATY Former baseball player
brings another one-year suspension. The Big 12 suspension is also one year for any performance-enhancing drug.
An athlete who tests positive during an NCAAgiven test is suspended from competition for one year and a second offense results in a lifetime ban if the drug is a performance-enhancing substance. A second offense for a recreational drug
According to the results of testing during the 2004 NCAA championships, 17 student athletes tested positive for street drugs, 14 for stimulants, three for diuretics or manupl
The Athletics Department declined to provide a similar summary of its drug testing results.
lators and two for steroids
In a survey of student athletes by the NCAA in 2005, only 1.2 percent of the 8,543 Division 1 athletes sampled admitted to using steroids. In comparison, 17.3 percent said they had used marijuana.
Swanson, Baty, Johnson and former baseball player lared Schweitzer said that they had not witnessed steroid use by KU athletes.
"Not here," Swanson said. "The guys are too little to be on steroids."
However, both Baty and Schweitzer said they had teammates from other schools on summer teams who used steroids during the summer months when they weren't being tested. Schweitzer said he was never tempted to join in.
"I just always played baseball and was good at it and I never had to take steroids to be good at it so why would I start taking steroids?" he asked. "I big of got into it. I'm not that big of a guy to begin with. I never got into taking steroids and trying to get bigger."
If a Kansas athlete arrived on steroids, he or she could still leave with a clean slate. New student athletes who test positive for any drugs face the same penalties as any first-time offenders, but that positive test doesn't count as a strike against the athlete. If that athlete tested positive again, it would count as a first offense.
Magee said coaches were not allowed to kick a player off the team after a first drug offense, although he said a player who violated other team rules and tested positive for drugs could be dismissed.
Weak penalties
Swanson tested positive during a random drug test given by Kansas. He said he was then tested 12 to 15 times during the next year. One of those tests was an NCAA test that Swanson and about 30 other teammates were randomly selected to take before the Fort Worth Bowl.
Swanson was critical of the counseling sessions he was required to attend after a positive test. Swanson said he had to fill out a drug awareness packet, which included information on heroin and meth.
"I'm like. I just smoked a blunt. That's all I did," he said. "It's like real unnecessary but it's just what they do. I understand. I did it without any quarrel. I didn't put up a fight. I just did it. It wasn't that bad."
It was, in fact, a slap on the wrist for Swanson, who would have missed his entire senior season had the NCAA given the test. Until colleges have more comprehensive programs and stiffer penalties, Swanson said athletes would continue to not take drug tests seriously.
"It'd be way different," he said
Kansan senior staff writer C.J.
Moore can be contacted at cj-
moore@kansan.com.
Edited by Catherine Odson
BUSINESS
Excess oil supply leads to lower prices
STAN CHOE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — Oil prices briefly fell below $50 per barrel Thursday for the first time since May 25, 2005, after the government reported larger-than-expected jumps in crude oil and gasoline inventories.
Gasoline prices decreased from $1.84 a gallon to $1.79 Thursday afternoon in Cleveland.
"There's no doubt that this is significant," said Phil Flynn of Alaron Trading Corp. "If you're a bull, the only thing you can hold your hat on is they didn't close below $50."
Oil has dropped 17 percent since the end of 2006 amid weeks of mild winter weather in the U.S. Northeast, a key consumer of heating fuels, and growing energy stockpiles.
Scott Shaw/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The price for a barrel of light, sweet crude for February delivery fell as low as $49.90 on the New York Mercantile Exchange but spent only a moment below the $50 threshold. It settled at $50.48, down $1.76 from Wednesday's settlement price.
Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates, said prices could continue to fall toward $47 in the next two weeks, unless the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries calls for a meeting.
"The market is still seeking a bottom," he said, "and we had another bearish element tossed at it in the
U. S. crude oil stocks rose by 6.8 million barrels to 321.5 million, according to a report by the Energy Information Administration. Analysts had been expecting an increase of just 325,000 barrels, according to a Dow Jones Newswire survey. The EIA said inventories are above the upper end of the average range for this time of year.
form of these negative weekly statistics"
Gasoline inventories, meanwhile,
rose by 3.5 million barrels to 216.8 million, above analysts' expectations of a 2.6 million barrel rise. Distillate fuel inventories, which include heating oil, rose by 900,000 barrels to 141.9 million barrels, compared with analysts' expectations of a 1.3 million barrel rise.
The EIA said inventories for both gasoline and distillate fuels are at or above the upper end of the average range for this time of year.
ICE futures exchange fell $1.03 to
$5.75.
March Brent crude on London's
Heating oil lost 2.9 cents to $1.4707 a gallon while natural gas futures rose 9 cents to $6.324 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Gasoline prices fell 2.3 cents to $1.3553 a gallon.
Earlier in the day, prices were buffeted by a recent cold spell in the Northeast U.S. and forecasts of slow demand growth from the International Energy Agency.
In lowering expectations for this year as well revising last year's figures downward, the Paris-based IEA cited mild winter weather that has crimped energy demand and weaker expectations for U.S. economic growth.
In its closely watched monthly oil market report, the energy watchdog forecast global oil demand growth this year of 85.77 million barrels a day, down 160,000 barrels a day. And it said oil demand growth last year was 120,000 barrels a day lower.
Saudi oil minister Ali Naimi, who earlier this week said he opposed calls from other OPEC members for new cuts in production, announced Thursday his country planned to increase its crude oil production capacity nearly 40 percent by 2009 and double its refining size over the next five years to keep pace.
POLITICS
Congress changes ethics standards
JIM ABRAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — The Senate, responding to voter frustration with corruption and special interest influence in Washington, on Thursday overwhelmingly approved far-reaching ethics and lobbying reform legislation.
Under the bill, passed 96-2, senators will give up gifts and free travel from lobbyists, pay more for travel on corporate jets and make themselves more accountable for the pet projects they insert into bills.
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who made the bill his first initiative as head of the Senate, called it the "most significant legislation in ethics and lobbying reform we've had in the history of this country."
The Senate did resect the idea of setting up an independent office to investigate the ethical breaches of members. But it said that spouses of sitting members will no longer be able to lobby the Senate and lobbyists can no longer pay for extravagant parties for members at
national conventions.
Passage of the bill came a day after the measure appeared dead, the victim of a test of will between the two parties.
Republicans were angry they could not get a vote on a proposal giving the president, with congressional approval, more power to kill single spending items in larger bills. So GOP senators voted against a resolution needed to move the bill to final passage.
"I believe that we owe it to the voters as well as the institution to come to a fair agreement and pass this legislation."
On Thursday morning, both sides accused the other of killing the bill and betraying the trust of voters who had demanded that Congress clean up its act.
"What this maneuver shows is that the Republican leadership hasn't learned the lessons of the 2006 election," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
CRIME
The Democrat leadership does not have to kill this legislation" countered Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Idaho man charged with murder of child
JOHN MILLER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BOISE, Idaho = A man convicted in the 2005 slavings of three members of an idaho family was charged Thursday in U.S. District Court with kidnapping the family's two youngest children and killing one of them.
News of the indictment came hours after authorities in California said they were planning to charge Duncan with the 1997 kidnapping and murder of a 10-year-old boy whose bound, nude body was buried under a rock pile in the desert.
The indictment accuses Duncan of kidnapping Dylan Groene, 9, and his sister Shasta, then 8 years old, sexually abusing both and later killing Dylan in Montana.
Shasta was rescued as she and Duncan ate at a Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, restaurant in July 2005; about seven weeks after the abduction.
The indictment against Joseph Edward Duncan III, issued by a federal grand jury in Coeur d'Alene, will allow the government to seek the death penalty, U.S. Attorney Tom Moss said.
Duncan is also considered the prime suspect in the slayings of two children near Seattle.
Among the charges against
Duncan, 43, in the idaho case are kidnapping resulting in death, sexual abuse of both children and firearms counts.
The grand jury alleged that Duncan killed Dylan in an "especially heinous, cruel, and depraved manner," according to federal prosecutors. "The grand jury also found that the child's killing involved torture and serious physical abuse."
Roger Peven, Duncan's Idaho defense attorney, told The Associated Press late Thursday that the federal case will be resolved before any additional cases are tried in state court. He said his client would plead not guilty Friday.
"This will get the process going." Peven said. "We've been anticipating it for quite some time."
On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in Idaho charged Duncan with driving a stolen vehicle across state lines. The charge was considered a placeholder to make sure he was not extradited for crimes in other states before the federal case was completed.
Duncan already pleaded guilty last October to first-degree murder and kidnapping for the 2005 slayings of Brenda Groene, her fiance and her 13-year-old son. Duncan was sentenced to life for the kidnapping counts but has not been sentenced on the murder counts.
Discount tickets for KU students!