蘑菇视频

Jan 11, 2016 4 min read

Republicans all over the country are trying to put a stop to welfare recipients spending taxpayer money on drugs.

There’s one problem with that.

Those states are spending more money giving people drug tests, than they are saving by keeping drug users off of their welfare rolls.

Back in 2009, one of Arizona’s Republican State Representatives, John Kavanagh, told the Arizona Republic in 2009, “We don’t want people who are abusing drugs to be on welfare, because that means that the taxpayers are subsidizing and facilitating illegal drug use.”

Well, Arizona drug screened 142,424 people between 2009 and 2014. Only three people were denied welfare benefits.

The architects of the law had promised that the state would save $1.7 million dollars, by keeping welfare money out of the hands of drug abusers.

Instead the state only saved $3,500 for its drug testing efforts. The resulted were underwhelming.

In Utah, only 29 people tested positive for drugs between August of 2012, and July of 2014.

That’s 29 out of 9,552.

The Utah Department of Workforce Services claims the testing cost the state $64,566.

This isn’t to say that nobody standing in line at the nation’s welfare offices is living a drug-free life.

It is a fairly good indication that conservative lawmakers are overstating the need to be ever-vigilant when it comes to low-income people, and, by extension their innocent children.

A University of Chicago social scientist, Harold Pollack, wrote a blistering op-ed piece in the Washington Post in June of 2013, with the headline “States want drug tests for welfare recipients. That’s a terrible idea.”

Pollack wrote, “However one runs the numbers, illicit drug use disorders are not common among welfare recipients. Other physical and mental health problems are far more prevalent. Yet these less-moralized concerns receive much less attention from legislators or the general public.”

I say, any legislator who votes “Yea” on drug testing legislation, should themselves be tested for drugs.

Steve Katz was a New York state assemblyman who had spoken out against legalizing marijuana.

In March of 2013 Katz had his speeding car pulled over by a state trooper. He was found with a bag of marijuana.

John Fabrizi was the former mayor of Bridgeport, Conn., who in June of 2006 admitted to cocaine and alcohol abuse while he was in office.

In June of 2011, Mel LeBlanc, the former city council member and deputy mayor of Arlington, Texas, admitted he bought methamphetamine from prostitutes.

And in November of 2012, Denny Sparks, the former mayor of Olive Hill, Ky., was arrested for selling marijuana near an elementary school.

There are no specific laws against public officials who swear an oath to serve their constituents, while, at the same time, they have crack pipes stuck in their back pockets.

But those people of trust can easily and legally try to throttle the well-beings of people of limited means.

Up in Wisconsin, the Tea Party-backed governor, and former-failed presidential candidate, Scott Walker, recently signed a law that allows the state to test certain people for controlled substances if they apply for FoodShare, the state’s welfare program.

Before the law went into effect, the federal government sent an email to Wisconsin saying that drug testing wasn’t permitted under the FoodShare program.

Walker was so eager to have his state join the ranks of the other drug testing states that he filed a preemptive request with a federal court, asking it to issue an injunction to prevent the federal government from curtailing the law.

Meanwhile, between January and December of 2014, 38,970 welfare applicants were screened in the state of Missouri.

Only 48 of them tested positive for drug use. According to the Missouri Department of Social Services, the testing cost the state $336,297.

A year earlier, in October of 2013, Republican Rep. Trey Radel of Florida found himself in a predicament.

He was in Washington, D.C. when he tried buy 3.5 grams of cocaine from an undercover federal officer.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it here – let’s start drug testing public officials.

Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net