Drug Tests for Welfare Recipients
By 2013,13 of the 30 state legislatures had passed laws requiring a urine sample for people receiving welfare, unemployment assistance, job training, food stamps, or public housing. Several other states were considering doing the same, with the expressed hope of saving money. Opponents of these laws have produced data showing the high cost of administering the testing programs compared to the relatively small number of positive drug tests found. For example, according to Think Progress.org, in one year Oklahoma spent just over $230,000 on a program that gave urine tests to about 1,300 welfare applicants for whom they had “reasonable suspicion” of drug use. There were 138 positive results, just over 10 percent. Others have reported that in all these programs the rate of positive urine tests is lower than the rate of self-reported illicit drug use in the overall population, suggesting that welfare applicants or recipients have a lower than average likelihood of being drug users. Proponents of these laws argue that drug testing is not uncommon in the workplace, and since welfare assistance, unemployment assistance, and job training are all intended to provide a transition to employment, these policies make sense.
However, one opponent was quoted as saying, All this does is perpetuate the stereotype that low-income people are lazy, shiftless drug addicts and if all they did was pick themselves up by the bootstraps then the country wouldn’t be in the mess it’s in.” Quoted in A.G Sulzberger States Adding Drug Test as Hurdle for Welfare, Newyork times. What do you think? Is this a reasonable type of policy to impose during a time of high government expenditures? Is it unreasonable, particularly in a time of high unemployment? Imagine a specific example of a single mother with two young children. Previously employed at a low-paying job, she is receiving unemployment payments while attending a community college, and she also has been receiving food stamps. If she smokes marijuana and fails the urine test, should this assistance be stopped?
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