Senator McCain sponsored a bill called the ôAmateur Sports Integrity Actö in 2000. This bill received approval from the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in May of 2001 to be scheduled for a hearing and a vote in the United States Senate. The bill was re-introduced in 2002 and again in 2003 by Senator McCain.
The Amateur Sports Integrity Act is legislation that results from recommendations made by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, which the Commission released in June 1999.á Congress created this Commission in 1996 in response to an alarming growth of gambling. The Commission studied the social and economic impact of gaming and recommended ways to regulate it.áThe Commission found that illegal gaming on college campuses enticed some student-athletes to turn to point shaving in order to either augment their income, or to get out of debts owed to their on-campus bookmakers. The Amateur Sports Integrity Act is an outgrowth of a 1999 Congressional study that cited examples of college athletes æthrowingÆ games, and other athletes involved in point-shaving schemes in which student-athletes played to win but purposely failed to score enough points to beat the point spread.
Title One of the original Act as introduced by Senator McCain directed the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish a program to support research and training in methods of detecting the use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes. The two goals of this portion of the proposed legislation were prevention of the use of performance-enhancing drugs and intervention when an athlete was suspected of using this type of drug. Under Title One of the Act, the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology would be empowered and instructed to develop a grant program to fund educational substance abuse prevention and intervention programs related to the use of performance-enhancing substances.
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