As time progressed, the idea of welfare has changed. Welfare was created to help individuals and families when they were faced with hard times. Just a few years ago, it was rare that you came across someone that was on welfare. If they were on welfare, no one talked about it. Today, being on welfare is much more common. It’s actually taken as a joke. There are videos on the internet of little children commenting things such as, “that’s why my mother gets more food stamps than you”. In fact, there are even cases where the people who are on welfare sell their food stamps to make a profit. People who are on welfare are often judged and seen as lazy. Welfare is something that is thought to be taking advantage of today. In order to stop people from taking advantage of welfare, drug testing welfare recipients was brought into the picture. I believe we should not drug test individuals who are receiving help from government programs because it is not effective way to reduce the number individuals that take advantage of the government programs, it is unfair, drug testing is an invasion of privacy and we are spending more money drug testing than the actual government programs.
There are many ways of defining welfare. Welfare is defined as “well-being, happiness, health and prosperity (of a person, community) (Greve 51). With help from the government, if need, every person is intended to live a happy and healthy life. The six most common forms of government programs that are received are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Unemployment benefits and SNAP, also known as food stamps. These programs were created to help the individuals and families struggling with poverty. According to Pew Research Center, “Unemployment benefits, food stamps, welfare and Medicaid target lower-income Americans or those facing a short-term economic hardship such as a loss of a job. In contrast, Social Security and Medicare primary-though not exclusively-serve older adults of all income levels” (Taylor 3).
Today, more and more people are using government programs for help. In 2012, a study was conducted by Pew Research Center. The survey included 2,511 participants who were asked questions via telephone from November 28th 2012 through December 5th 2015. The participants were asked questions regarding government programs. As a result, the “majority of Americans (55%) have received government benefits from at least one of the six best-known federal entitlement programs, (32%) said they received help from two or more” (Taylor 1). The (16%) of the participants who said they did not receive any help from government programs mentioned that someone else living in the household was. Out of the 55% percent of the people who said they had personally received benefits, black women in rural areas where more likely to receive help than white men in suburban areas. The Pew Research Center also found “that nearly six-in-ten Americans (57%) say it is the government’s responsibility to care for those who cannot take care of themselves” (Taylor 2).
In 2011, Florida was the first state to begin drug testing welfare recipients. One comment that was spread in the media was “I-95 will be jammed for the next month or so…. Druggies and deadbeats heading North out of Florida”. Jokes were spreading like wildfire; assuming that every person receiving help from the government was on drugs. Followed by Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin. As of March 2016, “seventeen states are now planning to address substance abuse and drug testing for welfare programs” (NCSL). As the years are progressing, more and more states are starting to drug test. In 2014, when Tennessee passed their bill, it required a suspicion-based test. Welfare recipients had to answer a questionnaire. If their answers showed any suspicion to them using drugs, they were drug tested. All seventeen states drug test for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) while Medicaid is rarely being drug tested for. Less than half of those states are drug testing for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Most states drug test for TANF because the individual is supplied with money. The government supplies the money for the things that individual and family needs, but cannot control what they spend it on. SNAP on the other hand can be control. SNAP is a certain amount of money put onto a card use to buy almost all food sold in grocery stores.
Using drug test to control government programs is unfair because not only does it affect the individual it affects the children as well. By making drug test mandatory, you can either take the drug test or refuse it and lose your assistance. “If welfare recipients fail a drug test or refuse to take it, they don’t have the option to find another government to get the assistance that they need. Most welfare recipients are in need of public assistance due to situations that they cannot control. For Example, if a single mother of three kids get laid off due to the harsh economy, at some point, she has no other choice but to ask for help. Eventually, she may have to utilize public assistance that the government has put in place such as food stamps. If the government make drug testing mandatory, the single mother of three has only one choice to make- do whatever the government requires to feed her kids” (Bennett 9). The mother is going to do everything she can to supply shelter and food for her children. Drug use is illegal, but “the penalty for doing drugs should not be homelessness or starvation for whole families” (Bennett 9).
Denise Calder, a middle school teacher in Broward County, Florida, has a Bachelors of Science and has worked steadily since 1994.She is now a 42-year-old divorced, single mother of 4 kids. She makes $41,300 every year. Every penny goes to food, rent, gas, medical bills and anything else needed. Since 2009, she has applied and been accepted for Medicaid and SNAP on 2 occasions” (Cunha 2). The typical welfare female is seen as “the welfare queen with 6 kids, driving around in a Cadillac, watching soap operas on an expensive television and eating junk food on the couch” (Cunha 1). That is not the case with Denise or the average female on welfare. Denise is doing everything in her power to supply everything her children with everything they need. She has no choice but to apply for assistance. She could possibly be under a lot of stressing; raising four kids and being a school teacher. To release her stress, she has smoke marijuana here and there. Her smoking, doesn’t not make her a bad mother or a bad school teacher. Denise should be allowed to do what she pleases, just like the individuals who are doing well enough without the help from government programs.
It is an invasion of privacy to drug test individuals who are receiving help from the government. The Fourth Amendment states “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” and that warrants should only issue upon probable cause” (Wurman 3). The Fourth Amendment guarantees to protect us and our rights. The court makes it seem like our rights aren’t being taken away; “they force individuals to consent to invasive drug test and thereby relinquish Fourth Amendment rights” (Goetzl 2). Asking individuals receiving help from government programs to take a drug test or give up welfare “does not require them to compromise one constitutional right at the expense of another” (Goetzl 4). For a drug test a search is being conduction through an individual’s body by looking at the blood and urine, “by forcing this particular group of people to submit to mandatory drug screening, it is not only discriminatory but also an invasion of privacy and unconstitutional” (Bennett 1).
We are wasting so much money and time focusing on individuals who receive assistance from welfare programs. For example, “using drug test for this purpose is quite expensive, with one estimate of between $40 and $60 per test” (Larrison & Sullivan 118). If 10,000 people had to take a drug test and 9,000 came back negative. We would reimburse those 9,000 negative test. It would cost us around $360,000-$540,000 if each drug test was in the range of $40-$60. There is so much more we can put that money into. “Instead of wasting taxpayer money to weed out a small percent of those in need, demonizing an entire sect of people of misleading stereotypes, maybe it’s time we put our funds into helping them find their way out of the system and onto their own two feet” (Cunha 2-3). We would be able to help so many more people with house assistance, job searches, food, insurance and so on. Not many people who are receiving government assistance are testing positive for drug use. Rather than using your typical urine drug test which cost less, “80% of states claimed that they used the self-report instruments” (Larrison & Sullivan 118). So the amount being spent on drug testing is greater than expected. When drug testing passed, “During the one month Michigan had its universal drug testing program in place, only 1.2% tested positive for any illicit drug other than marijuana (Larrison & Sullivan 118). If 500 people were drug tested, roughly about 5 of them tested positive. We are focusing so much on those 5 individuals and neglecting the other 495 individuals.
It is assumed that individuals who are on welfare are lazy. “States already do a good job of ensuring no one get a free ride” (Cunha 1). Individuals who receive government assistance work just as hard as everyone else. Everyone assumes that people who receive welfare are not doing nothing; “according to current federal guidelines, TANF recipients are required to participate in work activities for 30 hours per week” (Larrison & Sullivan 112). Work activities include actually working and even searching for a job. Connections are trying to be made with drugs and being unemployed. It is hard to tie these two together. “Rates of illicit drug use are consistently highest among unemployed adults and lowest among those with full-time employment. Even so, national surveys consistently find that nearly 75% of illicit drug users are employed either full-time or part time. Clearly the correlation between drug use and employment is far from perfect” (Larrison & Sullivan 116-117). According to the survey, the individuals who show results using the drugs are the ones who are employed. The unemployed individuals on welfare are not showing drug problems in the numbers. This survey shows that you can have a drug problem bring employed without the help from government programs. Drug use should be focused on everyone, not just individuals who receive help from government programs.
Drug tests are not 100% effective. If you know the right people and are given enough time, anyone is capable of passing a drug test. A drug test can make a mistake and conclude a misreading.“False positives are another problem, both because of flaws in the handling of samples and because over-the-counter medicines can be misread; the cold medication Nyquil, for example, often registers as an opiate. Officers of the New York City Police Department are prohibited from eating muffins with poppy seeds because of the potential for false drug readings” (Chapman 2). If a drug test were to come back positive, everyone’s first thought is that this individual is on drugs. No one stops to think about the little things such as Nyquil and poppy seed muffins that could potentially throw off the results of a drug test. If an individual failed a drug test and mention that they had a poppy seed muffin, you can’t assume they are lying nor can you trust their word. Drug test are not very efficient and we should eliminate them overall.
Eventually at some point, we will have to put our pride to the side and ask for help. Times can be difficult and we don’t need unnecessary things like drug testing make it harder. Drug testing individuals should not be used as an effective way to reduce the number of individuals taking advantage of government programs because not everyone is taking advantage of the government programs. It is unfair for the individual and their family if they are drug tested, drug testing is an invasion of privacy and we are spending money drug testing than we are helping the individuals who are using our government programs.