Should anyone be surprised? The recent story from the medical side of high school and junior high sports that there is a marked increase in the use of steroids should shock no one. The shock should be that we have let it happen by simply accepting such use as a part of sports.

For years baseball and football players in particular have gone from 200 to 230 pounds in the course of a day and everyone just smiles and says, “Oh, just see how hard they hit,” or “Oh, just see how far the ball flies.” We’ve acted as though Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire just suddenly became the gods of the long ball without the aid of anything other than a change in their batting stance.

Nobody was fooling the kids. They read the wrestling and body-building magazines that use the word steroid in every other sentence or ad. They know the products that aren’t called steroids, but are just that.

Society applauds the muscle man who drives another guy into unconsciousness on the football field or puts holes in walls with a line drive, even if the results have nothing to do with natural ability and everything to do with “a little something extra.”

The media isn’t going to say much about the matter because they live off the headlines created by these behemoths of pills, and the public seems to want more of those headlines.

So the kids see all this, together with the idiot coaches and parents who push 3-year-olds to play some sport 22 hours a day so the child can become a pro billionaire and support the parents. What do we think will happen?

We also know that steroids probably kill people later in life, and not very late, at that. The negative effect on the body from steroid use in later years is just beginning to show up as retired athletes, particularly football players, find their insides falling apart from organ breakdown that medical evidence says is the result of steroid ingestion.

If that medical evidence is right, what is the effect going to be on kids who start taking the stuff in high school or before? Can it be that parents have become so locked into the star athlete syndrome that they are willing to take such chances with their own kids just because a kid has a one in a billion chance of signing some big league deal down the road?

Meanwhile, the pro sports find every way to sound concerned while making sure they don’t touch the issue. Major League Baseball talks around the issue of steroids, but falls back on the collective bargaining agreement with the players to say testing is not allowed. Seen any ads sponsored by MLB speaking out against the use of steroids? There’s no collective bargaining agbreement against that.

The NFL is probably so ingrained with players using the drug that they would have to have a major drug bust to address the issue.

College football is no different, maybe even worse since there should be some concern on the part of the universities about the students and their welfare.

If one listens to the players, the NHL is catching up to the other sports in steroid use.

Secondary schools must initiate an aggressive anti-steroid campaign. For the future health of the students, steroid use must be absolutely unacceptable.

It would be nice to think the Sosas and McGwires would be there to lead such an effort. They should be asked and asked to unequivocally state that they do not now use steroids. However, as with all matters relating to kids, it comes back to the parents.

Do you know what your child is taking?

NEWS columnist Gary Thorne, an Old Town native, is an ESPN and CBS broadcaster.