Why Are We Still Talking About Drug Tests for Welfare Recipients?

Why Are We Still Talking About Drug Tests for Welfare Recipients?
James Schlarmann

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First and foremost, I’d like to propose a law that no one is allowed to demagogue welfare recipients until they’ve tried to live on it. The stereotypes of welfare recipients are a major factor in getting these idiotic and discriminatory laws passed. Conservative lawmakers need to lay on the lies and insinuations rather thick to paint the picture of the average “welfare queen” — which is just dog-whistle racism — collecting check after check, getting pregnant with baby after baby instead of getting a job. Now look, I’m sure there are people who game the system thus. I am positive that anywhere you give human being a chance to exploit the generosity of others that exploitation will exist. But I am not convinced now, nor will I be until I see an independent, non-partisan audit of the states’ welfare systems whose data backs it up, that this is a common problem. Simply stated, I believe the problem of welfare abuse to be quite over-stated.

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And what happens if you enforce the stereotype enough? Well, for starters you can convince people to institute cruel hoops to make people jump through. But if you perpetuate the stereotype long enough, you can completely dehumanize welfare recipients. And when you don’t have any human empathy for those who are struggling, when Ayn Rand’s fuck buddy Paul Ryan comes to town and tells you we have to stop helping poor people so that the rich people don’t get mad us, people listen. Stereotypes are the path to austerity for the Republicans, and boy do they love enacting policies that reinforce those stereotypes, no matter how terribly humiliating the process.

So we’ve established that it’s just a really dickish thing to do, to take a poor person who’s already struggling to get by, and force them to take a piss test for no other reason than to enforce the stereotype. But I know for conservatives, appealing to the emotional toll a Draconian policy takes isn’t going to do much good. So let me appeal to their wallets. Drug testing welfare recipients is a massive cost undertaking for virtually zero results. It’s not surprising considering it’s the idea of the same group who thinks we should spend millions and write new laws disenfranchising minority voters because of another myth — voter fraud.

The fact of the matter is that every state that has put the practice of drug testing welfare recipients into effect has seen absolutely zero return on their investment. In Florida, for example, it’s estimate that Ricky Scott’s brainchild cost the state $118,140 and it got them 108 potential recipients snagged in their net. The kicker, they spent more on the program than they would have spent giving benefits to everyone, with or without a positive drug test.

The problem? They tested over 4000 people. That means they had to reimburse about 3900 people for the $30 testing fee (imagine telling someone who doesn’t have a pot to piss in they need to come up with thirty bucks just to be drug tested in anticipation of relief), and it cost the state an additional $40,000. State officials also said it didn’t have any impact on the number of incidents of recipients using welfare funds for drugs. So the policies don’t even make sense from a fiscal standpoint. You don’t save any money, at least not when you have to reimburse so many people who aren’t breaking the rules.

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