As reported yesterday in the New York Times, over the past year three dozen states introduced legislation to drug test individuals receiving public assistance. This includes individuals applying for everything from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) to welfare, unemployment and Medicare (incidentally, you know who isn't being asked to submit to drug testing before receiving public assistance? Bankers, traders and anyone else who received money from the bailout).
Thankfully, most of these bills have failed, but not all of them have. The most pernicious of them all was passed and was signed into law in Florida and more limited requirements were added in Indiana, Missouri and Pennsylvania. Florida's bill goes so far as to make all people applying for public assistance -- who by definition have very limited means -- pay for the cost of their drug test. If an individual's drug test comes back negative, the state will then reimburse the cost of the test. If the drug test comes back positive, Florida will bar the applicant from reapplying for TANF for a year (unless they get counseling, in which case they can apply in 6 months). There are no plans to offer any sort of substance abuse counseling or rehabilitation.
These laws are wrong. They are flat-out unconstitutional, shortsighted and will end up costing the state more than any possible savings. But even putting all of that aside, let's stop for a moment and ask ourselves the bigger question of why. Why are we drug testing anyone who isn't flying an airplane? Why poor people in particular? Some might argue it's because we can't have people spending money from the federal government on drugs. But I haven't heard of any plan to start drug testing students at Harvard who get federal student loans. These laws deliberately separate poor people from the rest of society, asserting that they have less of a right to privacy simply because they are having trouble making ends meet.
Others might argue that people are drug tested for their jobs, so why shouldn't people have to get tested to receive benefits? Because expanding the indignity of mandatory drug testing to more and more people is not the answer. Employers should not require employees to prove their innocence by taking a drug test any more than the government should be forcing poor people to do the same. Mandatory drug testing, whether as a condition of employment or as a requirement for the receipt of public assistance, is an unnecessary intrusion into personal privacy.
Last month, the ACLU of Florida filed suit in federal court on behalf of Luis Lebron, a 35-year-old Navy veteran, father of a 4-year-old, the sole caregiver for his disabled mother and a student at the University of Central Florida who refuses to relinquish his Fourth Amendment rights by submitting to drug testing at the hands of the state. As he said, "I served my country, I'm in school finishing my education and trying to take care of my son. It's insulting and degrading that people think I'm using drugs just because I need a little help to take care of my family while I finish up my education."
These laws target people who have one defining characteristic -- they are poor. In a time when more and more Americans need help feeding and clothing their families, the last thing we need are laws forcing poor people to give up their most basic constitutional rights.
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http://www.aclu.org/drug-law-reform/settlement-reached-aclu-michigan-lawsuit-over-mandatory-drug-testing-welfare-recipie
The fringe right has decreed that the poor are to blame for everything that is wrong with the country. The easiest way to punish them is to first strip away their humanity (Using the same basic kinds of rhetoric as a certain political party in a large European country about 80 some odd years ago).... Once you do that, anything you choose to inflict on them is "justifiable", even 'beneficial".
AND just like that other party, the right will use a mixture of envy, clever twists of 'facts', and play upon imaginary fears to get folks who SHOULD know better to agree with them. "The (insert group here) are not like "normal" people, they (insert whatever negative insinuation) to bring down the country"
The war on poverty is over. The war on poor people has just begun. I think it will get much worse before it gets better.
For example?
"You have the right to remain silent, anything you say may be taken down and used against you"
Seems to me to about sum up poor peoples rights in America,
Home of "The Best Congress Money Can Buy"
Question..............Why does Bank of America have a RIGHT to make a profit..............
but Citizens of America DON'T have a RIGHT to a living wage job?
Something's fishy in the State of Denmark.
That aside, the big issue is that we have patently absurd and archaic drug laws... and everyone who has read anything about it knows this. If drugs were ALL legalized, regulated and taxed, and then treated in the same way as alcohol, we would all be a lot better off... and we would collect an amazing amount of revenue too. But until then, testing the poor before they can qualify for public assistance seems just immoral to me. I understand that you do not agree, but it just seems punitive and nasty as hell.
For whatever reason our society has chosen to criminalize the poor. The homeless cannot sleep in our public parks without being rousted. The homeless cannot sleep in the lobby of any of our safe, heated and well-lit government buildings at night, while they just sit empty. American citizens freeze to death on the streets in Washington DC every winter, while our hallowed halls sit empty, warm and secure. We are already a society that couldn't care less about it's poor and begrudgingly offers assistance to those who need it. We have so many other real problems to deal with, and here are our representatives discussing drug testing for the poor before they receive benefits? To me that is the real crime.
While it may seem facially good policy to test because "they" are getting public money, that logic would do away with the 4th amendment. We all constantly get government benefits. If you drove your car this morning, public money subsidized the roads you used. Public money pays for the water that comes out of your tap. Public money pays for the schools where you dropped off your kids. How is medicare or unemployment benefits different than social security. If we don't stop this when its only hitting the unpopular among us, how will we stop it when they want to drug test you before you can open a garbage pick-up account?
Not at all, they have the right to refuse government help and they would not be tested.