Plan’s Aim Is to Deter, Daly Says : ‘We’re Not Trying to Catch People--It’s Not That Kind of Thing’

Dr. Tony Daly, the man who will be in charge of major league baseball’s planned drug-testing program, said Friday that the purpose of the program is not to catch drug users but to curb and perhaps eradicate drug use.

“We’re not trying to catch people. It’s not that kind of thing at all,” Daly said of the program ordered by Commissioner Peter Ueberroth in the wake of the game’s increasingly frequent drug scandals.

“It’s basically to identify them (drug users) early on, hopefully before they get to the addictive stage, and, through means of education and player assistance programs, stop them.

“The second big thing is the deterrent effect of testing. If we can deter someone from using drugs because we’re doing testing, then that’s a big plus for us and for them.”

Daly, who has overseen testing in the minor leagues last summer and in the winter leagues this year, said results of the random, unannounced drug tests would be kept confidential, with not even the individual clubs or the commissioner’s office knowing the outcome.

“The commissioner’s office won’t know it and the club won’t know it, except for probably the employee assistance person, and that will be my decision,” Daly said. “The basis of the program is confidentiality.

“We’re doing it to help the players. We’re not doing it to help the commissioner’s office, we’re not doing it to help the ballclubs, although indirectly they do get helped. Obviously, if we can stop the use of drugs it helps everybody.”

Daly said that the frequency of the testing was a confidential matter and could well vary from player to player.

“There’s not going to be any pattern where they know we’re here now and we won’t come back for six weeks,” he said. “We might be there today and again next week and then not come back for two months. That’s the basis of random testing--that you don’t know when the tests are going to be done.”

Tests will be administered to spot the use of cocaine, marijuana, heroin and morphine. Morphine is not an illegal drug, but tests would indicate if its use was being abused.

Although he will oversee the program rather than actually be involved in administering the tests, Daly said he will be the only one who knows whether a player has tested positive.

“We have a coding system so that no one knows the positives except me,” he said, then added that he believes there is no way a player can cheat the program.

“There’s no way to beat the test, there’s no safe way around it. Any way they can think up to cheat the system we already have worked out.”

Daly said he hoped the players’ union would understand that the purpose of Ueberroth’s program is to help the players.

“I don’t really get involved in it as far as the politics go but I would think they’d want to clean up the problem just as much as anybody else does,” he said. “Hopefully, they’ll trust me and our program.”