St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby J. Guidroz recently told the New York Times that as many as 20 of the 100 customers identified in a recent rural Louisiana steroid bust were high school students (”High Schools Take on Doping With No Consensus on Strategy,” November 27).

In an investigation that has identified about 100 suspected steroid users and 15 dealers in the county, 10 people have been arrested, including two former high school football players, the sheriff said. He added that of those 100 suspected users, as many as 20 were high school athletes. That number stunned educators and law enforcement officials who had considered performance-enhancing drugs to be more of a big-city problem.

“I think there’s more steroid use, after talking to my investigators, in sports activities than originally thought,” said Bobby J. Guidroz, the sheriff of St. Landry Parish, population 90,000, about two hours west-northwest of New Orleans.

… Read the rest of this entry »