use of drugs in collegiate years is rising. More specifically, one cannot help but notice the extent that the drug epidemic has infiltrated college athletics. For example, Len Bias, the greatest basketball player ever to play in the highly touted Atlantic Coast Conference and former number one draft choice of the Boston Celtics, died of a cocaine overdose in 1986 (Adier and Cohen 16). Also, self-destruction due to cocaine use caused the end of a promising career for Danny McLain, former point guard of the National Champion Villanova basketball team. Further, 21 percent of college football players, including All-American Brian Bosworth, the most visible player of the 1986 season, were banned from bowl games for their use of steroids (Neff 22). These highly publicized incidents have led to the discovery of extensive drug use among college athletes. As a result, drug testing of college athletes is an appropriate approach to halting the proliferation of collegiate drug use.
Although Stanford University's Athletic Director Andy Geiger says that he prefers to trust the students in hopes to "avoid playing cops and robbers," it appears that some outside force, like mandatory drug testing, is needed to curb the athlete's use of drugs. At Stanford alone this "trust" is very much abused as a recent self-reporting survey (which tends to underestimate drug use) of varsity athletes indicated that 21 percent use pot and 13 percent use cocaine (Selby and Weinstein 5). Granted, athletes are not the only college students who abuse drugs. However, "due to the public display of their athletic abilities, and their status as role models for younger individuals, the public demands that athletes conform to higher standards of personal conduct" (Ayers 95). The athletes, and not the cafeteria hashers, are on the television week after week, swarmed by the media and depicted as heroes. Whether they like it or not, college athletes are the ones young...