Drug Testing For Welfare

There is quite a lot of controversy and heated discussions in our country relating to drug testing for welfare recipients. As of November 10, 2015, thirteen states, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah have passed laws for drug screening or testing for public assistance. Another nineteen states, including Ohio, have proposed legislation requiring some form of drug testing. In 2011, Florida passed a law that required every single applicant for TANF (The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) to pass a urine drug test. In some states, recipients of welfare benefits have already taken the programs to court because the recipients feel their rights …show more content…
Welfare recipients are no more likely to use drugs than the rest of the population. According to a 1996 study by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, differences between the proportion of welfare and non-welfare recipients using illegal drugs are statistically insignificant. Before the Michigan policy was halted, only ten percent of recipients tested positive for illegal drugs. Only three percent tested positive for hard drugs, such as cocaine and amphetamines. Rates that are in line with the drug use rates of the general population. Seventy percent of all illegal drug users (and a much higher percentage of alcohol users), ages eighteen to forty-nine, are working full-time. Science and medical experts both oppose the drug testing of welfare recipients. The Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) recommended doing away with random drug testing of welfare recipients. CAMH believes that there was little benefit to testing and that the idea associated with testing impacted those on welfare negatively. They recommended that resources be assigned towards better training for government workers to detect signs of substance abuse and mental disorders, as well as to greater assistance and treatment to those in need of help. In addition, mandatory drug testing of welfare recipients is opposed by the American Public Health Association, National Association of Social Workers, Inc., …show more content…
At the time Michigan’s drug testing scheme was struck down, the forty-nine other states had turned down such a program for a number of fiscal and practical reasons: at least twenty-one states concluded that such a program “may be unlawful”; seventeen states mentioned cost concerns; eleven states did not considered drug testing at all; and eleven gave a number of practical reasons. In stopping the implementation of Michigan’s drug testing law, U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Roberts ruled that the state's rationale for testing welfare recipients “could be used for testing the parents of all children who received Medicaid, State Emergency Relief, educational grants or loans, public education or any other benefit from that State.” Any of the justifications put forth to subject welfare recipients to random drug testing would also by logical extension apply to the entire population that receives some benefit from the government and that is a parent. It is clear that our constitution would object to the random drug testing of this large group of people, making the drug testing of an equally absurd category of people, welfare recipients unconstitutional as well. Some states constitutions actually offer greater privacy of protection to individuals than