For football fans, September signaled the start of another NFL season. But this fall season also marks the return of Congress to the Hill and so, too, the recurring sports–politics convergence over steroids and other banned performance-enhancing substances.

Virginia Republican Tom Davis and California Democrat Henry Waxman are dipping back in the professional sports pool, questioning whether the National Football League’s drug testing policies really work. Waxman has said he was “stunned” after reading the August 27, 2006, Charlotte Observer article detailing the case against James Shortt, a former West Columbia, South Carolina, physician, who last February pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute anabolic steroids and human growth hormone. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors agreed to dismiss 42 counts of distributing the drugs to patients who are reported to have included current and former Carolina Panthers Kevin Donnalley, Jeff Mitchell, Todd Steussie, Louis Williams, Wesley Walls, and Henry Taylor. Shortt received a jail sentence of a year and a day.

In an August 2005 interview, Shortt told HBO’s Bob Costas that he had treated about 18 NFL players, providing roughly half with anabolic steroids and injecting most with HGH. Shortt maintained that he administered the drugs to repair injuries, not to enhance performance.

Apparently Waxman — who is the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Government Reform and who was a central figure in the March 17, 2005, House hearings on steroid use in Major League Baseball — has not followed the ongoing Shortt–Panthers saga, which has been in the news for about a year and a half.

Why is Waxman’s astonishment significant? The NFL has somehow escaped the battering that Major League Baseball has taken since the BALCO case broke. In fact, Rep. Davis seemed rather conciliatory following an April 27, 2005, hearing during which former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, Players Association Executive Director Gene Upshaw, and others testified before the committee.

“It’s a policy with tough penalties that’s getting tougher all the time,” Davis said. “But it’s not perfect, and that’s one of the reasons we’re here today. The NFL’s testing program has come under heightened scrutiny in recent weeks,” he added.

Davis was referring at the time to a CBS “60 Minutes II” report in which it was disclosed that a self-described “longevity physician” in South Carolina — Shortt — had written steroid prescriptions for three Carolina Panthers in 2003.

Davis and Waxman, meanwhile, hammered baseball officials, threatening to introduce legislation that would create uniform drug testing policies for major sports.

In 2005, Major League Baseball and the league’s Players Association agreed to stiffer penalties for players caught using banned substances. The National Football League is ready to invest $500,000 for research to develop a reliable test that would detect the presence of human growth hormone in players and has indicated that it would consider additional drug testing. Congress’s interest seemed to be waning until the Charlotte Observer story published in August revived concerns.

There are numerous problems with Congress imposing a uniform drug testing policy, not the least of which is that a law imposing federal guidelines on the sports industry flies in the face of the idea of self-regulation among professional leagues. Congress’s proposed legislation also turns a blind eye to earlier legislation that tackled the issue: the Anabolic Steroid Act of 1990 made possession of steroids illegal without a prescription. So why is Congress asking the professional leagues to do the work of law enforcement? If Congress is so concerned about steroid possession, it should let the proper law enforcement arm handle the investigation and arrest of suspected distributors and users, just like it does for other controlled substances, including cocaine, heroin, and other drugs.

The judicial system has worked in the BALCO case, although the sentences given to BALCO founder Victor Conte and others were relatively light: The Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative’s chief was sentenced to four months jail time followed by another four under house arrest. It has also proved effective in the investigation of Shortt, who lost his license and got some jail time.

For some reason, Congress, the leagues, and the players associations continue to lose sight of the fact that steroids and other illegal substances are, in fact, illegal, and people caught abusing them are subject to jail time. Apparently, no one can stomach seeing players arrested even when those athletes break the law. Instead, it seems most would be happier to have athletes serve a suspension and forfeit their salary — which means that everyone is willing to concede that athletes are not only above the law, but entitled to special privileges.

Let law enforcement officials — not sports associations — deal with Floyd Landis, Marion Jones, and Justin Gatlin, three elite athletes who failed drug tests this summer (although Jones’s “B” sample exonerated her). If Congress is serious about solving what it considers a menace, then it should leave it to the justice system to rectify.

And, if Davis and Waxman want to find out what ill effect steroid use among professional athletes may be having on the adolescent population, they should expand their scope of investigation beyond the officials who rule the gridiron or the baseball diamond. It’s not just the jocks who are experimenting with steroids.

American teenagers increasingly come in two varieties: in shape and in need of a treadmill. Both may be using steroids, ephedra, and other substances not only because they want to hit the ball farther out of the park or run a 100-yard dash in record time, but because they want to look good doing it.

Some government and university studies contend that about 5% of high-school girls and 7% of middle school girls admit to having tried anabolic steroids at least once, and usage has been rising steadily since 1991.

From middle-school girls who want to control their weight to budding student athletes, young people are daily bombarded with beer spots, movies, magazines, and prime–time shows marketed squarely at them. The House Committee on Government Reform should ask the advertising, television, and film executives, and countless other image-makers, to explain those carefully crafted messages.

Federally mandated suspensions and fines for the users of banned performance-enhancing substances are not the solution. Arrest the users. That will grab people’s attention far better than any bill aimed at 4,000 or so pro athletes.