But the reality is that $100,000 doesn't go very far when it comes to steroid testing. It's $35,000 short of what's necessary to test the maximum number of athletes allowed by the new law.

State Rep. Marcelo Llorente, R-Miami, the driving force behind the one-year pilot program, has said the steroid bill "was a huge step in the right direction."

Many on the front lines, however — the state's athletes, coaches and athletic administrators — believe that step wasn't nearly big enough.

"I think it's a bunch of crap personally," said Immokalee High School football coach John Weber. "It's not going to be a big enough sample to measure anything. I don't see the purpose behind it."

The program only targets athletes in grades 9-12 who compete in any of six sports — football, boys and girls weightlifting, flag football (which last spring was a female-only sport), softball and baseball. Flag football and softball were added after the testing bill became law in an effort to be more gender equitable, and added more than 15,000 athletes to the pool eligible for testing.

According to the FHSAA, 77,171 students participated in these six sports during the 2006-07 school year. State law permits a maximum of 1 percent — or 771 — of those athletes to be tested.

The National Center for Drug Free Sport, which will administer Florida's testing program and also handles testing for the NCAA and minor league baseball, charges $175 per test. That means there's enough money to test about 571 of 230,892 athletes statewide. That's 2.4 of every 1,000 and less than one from each of the FHSAA's 750 member schools.

"My understanding is the intention of this program is to deter people," said Ernie Modugno, the Naples High School athletic director and a member of the FHSAA's board of directors. "If you're only testing 500 or 600 athletes statewide and you have 750 member schools, I'm not sure how much of a deterrent that is to anybody."

Just how widespread steroid use is among Florida high school athletes is open to debate.

"I don't think it's a problem," said Cape Coral High School senior quarterback David Pasquale. "I think there's maybe a good 1 percent of kids in the county that might — might — consider taking steroids. But hey, we'll see what happens."

According to a recent Florida survey, about 1.4 percent of the state's high school students — 19,350 — reported at one time using steroids and 5,600 admitted using them in the previous 30 days.

However, Frank Uryasz, president of Drug Free Sport, said he's not aware of any surveys that only address the rate of steroid use among Florida's high school athletes.

"Without some tool to actually measure the effects (of testing), you simply do not know how many tests are enough," he said.

Polk County has such a tool. In 2004, the county received a $250,000 annual grant for three years to test all its high school athletes for recreational drugs. After the first year, the county had enough money left over to begin testing for steroids on a limited basis.

According to Audrey Kelley-Fritz, the county's drug testing coordinator, 4.8 percent of Polk athletes reported using steroids in 2005-06, the first year of steroid testing. In 2006-07, that figure dropped to 4.6 percent.

"Steroids is the least abused drug of all," Kelley-Fritz said. "It's very difficult if you're only randomly testing 1 percent to find students who are using steroids."

In contrast, over the past three years of testing, Kelley-Fritz reported about 1 percent of Polk's athletes have tested positive for recreational drug use. Also during that period in Polk, surveys indicated marijuana use dropped 17 percent and alcohol use 5.3 percent.

Kelley-Fritz said Polk paid $18 per athlete to test for recreational drugs. That means for $100,000, Florida could test nearly 100 times the number of athletes for recreational drugs than it will for steroids.