One Needle in a Very Large Haystack

There's a certain irony that on the day the wags at the Wall Street Journal published a story titled "Why Everything Is Bigger in Texas," about the number of past and present players from the Texas Rangers who have been implicated in the growing steroid scandal, another story ran on the front page of the Houston Chronicle. This one was headlined "State's High School Steroid Testing Yields 7 Positive Results."

Texas has embarked on the country's most aggressive testing program for high school athletes, and here are the latest numbers: Out of 29,000 tests, only 11 have been positive. Now, even I hadn't been drug-free in high school, I could figure out that that's only 0.037 percent. And let's be honest, I would have expected that at least 0.037 percent would have been flagged for ingesting a combination of Dr Pepper, heroin, diesel fuel, and Monster Energy drink.

So my question is this: Assuming the numbers are correct, is the program really worth $6 million a year? And if the testing is flawed, why are we paying the National Center for Drug Free Sport that much money in the first place?