Drug Testing the Welfare Recipient.

This is a hotly debated issue going around the 'net and the social media sites quite a lot. Should we test the welfare recipients for drug usage before allowing them to receive assistance?

A lot of people say that they should. "After all," (as the mindset goes) "I had to get drug tested in order to make the money you're getting for free."

And I can understand that mentality. It makes people angry to see someone paying for groceries with food assistance cards and/or vouchers and then buy a metric fuck ton of cigs with a roll of bills you could use to beat whales to death with. Or to see all that assistance-paid-for groceries getting loaded into a pimped out SUV with rims that cost more than your car did.

I kid you not. I've seen someone loading WIC Voucher paid for groceries into an SUV with PimpStar Rims. And while I think it's awesome to have rims that with the LED's can display any image you want and would love to have a set so I can display the Klingon Emblem...the gorram things cost damn near $12,000 for the set. 

They're awesome, but not "costs more than a brand new Hyundai" awesome.

So I do understand the frustration. I do understand how it pisses people off to imagine their hard earned money going to support someone who is going to sit around the house, flip off "da man", and get totally fucked up. The concept pisses me off too.

But I have a bad habit of thinking for myself. I have a tendency to question things. I do research. Case in point, drug testing welfare recipients. It doesn't work as well as people would like. Why? Because contrary to popular belief, not everyone who is on welfare is a junkie-12-grand rim buying wastrel.

Most are simply people who got butt fucked by the bad economy. You know, the one everyone blames on Obama, Bush, God (punishing us for Gay Rights Reforms), Corporations, Rich People, and whatever the blame-recipient du jour is.

You see, Florida already tried this. It didn't work *quite* as planned.

In July 2011, Florida signed into law where welfare applicants must pay for their own drug screening. If they test clean, they get their money back and get onto the assistance program. If they fail, they *dont* get their money back and can not re-apply for one year at which time they'll need to fork up the cash for the test and hopefully have had learned their lesson that "drugs are bad, M'kay". Sounds good...in theory.

But here's where it all falls flat. Between two and three percent of all applicants test positive. That means that 97 to 98 people out of 100 are clean. Reading the article, you're looking at Florida spending about four dollars to save one dollar.

Now if you had a friend that spent $80 on scratch-off lottery tickets and they got super excited that out of all of those tickets they had a single $20 winner...you'd look at them like they had brain damage and would try to get them to seek help for their addiction.

Yet when the State is doing this to try to save you the taxpayer a buck of your hard earned money by spending four bucks of your hard earned money...you're ok with this because "it's getting those damn stoner fucks off of the taxpayer's sore nipples"?

Like I said. I'm all for cutting government spending. I'm all for saving money. But the system has a lot of flaws.

1. You have right off the bat the cost in the system and the 4-to-1 spent vs savings ratio.
2. Drug Testing does not detect the legal drugs such as alcohol and cigarettes. And as so many have said, of you can afford booze and cigs, you don't fugging need welfare.
3. Drug Testing does not detect Plasma High-Def TV's, Xbox 360'a, Pimped out SUV's and all the other luxury items that a lot of the welfare recipients that defraud the system purchase with money that they *should* be using for their own survival.
4. Drug Testing does not detect women who have more babies so they can have a higher welfare check.
5. Drug Testing is a form on unwarranted search that is forbidden by the Constitution. Yes some states are getting away with that but there are a number of lawsuits that challenge the legality of said testing. You getting tested at work is an agreement that you signed off on when you put in your resume at said business. You gave them the permission to test you. You always have the right to say "No." However they have the right to say "you agreed when you signed off on your copy of the employee handbook, it's not our problem that you didn't read it and so now we're going to fire you."

In short it is not the correct solution to the problem. I agree that there needs to be a solution to the problem of welfare fraud and people who do not deserve to be on it. But until something comes along...it is what it is and we have to accept that.