Yet you hear so many grumbling that it should be done.

They're the ones who make policy that we all have to live with. Its them who should be tested not the poor person needing a fix of groceries, or heat or hell a roof over their heads.
Politicians are the scum of the earth

why shouldn't the recipients have to pee in a cup to get the benefits that my tax dollars provide?

I don't buy into the argument that if the benefits denied don't exceed the cost of the tests, then it's a waste. There is no way to know how many people don't apply because they know they would fail. Additionally, the fact that they can't get benefits if they're doing drugs should motivate at least some drug users needing benefits to get themselves clean. Lastly, the potential of being denied benefits over drug use should motivate at least some potential users not to start.

Talking points actually had an audience.

The experiment has already been tried - it was a waste & a money maker for tax leech profiteers.

ETA: with 9 responses and 5 of them being you and me, your OP didn't get much of an audience either.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/florida-didnt-save-money-by-drug-testing-welfare-recipients-data-shows/1225721

***SNIP

Of the 4,086 applicants who scheduled drug tests while the law was enforced, 108 people, or 2.6 percent, failed, most often testing positive for marijuana. About 40 people scheduled tests but canceled them, according to the Department of Children and Families, which oversees Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, known as the TANF program.

The numbers, confirming previous estimates, show that taxpayers spent $118,140 to reimburse people for drug test costs, at an average of $35 per screening.

The state's net loss? $45,780.

"That's not counting attorneys and court fees and the thousands of hours of staff time it took to implement this policy," Newton said.

An inane, money-eating sham: Drug tests for welfare a huge failure

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/29/gop’s_inane_money_eating_sham_drug_tests_for_welfare_a_huge_failure/


However, across the board these programs fail to do so — and that’s not even their biggest problem.

In 2009, Arizona was the first state to adopt a program that drug-tested recipients of welfare whom officials had “reasonable cause” to believe were using drugs. Besides stigmatizing recipients of government assistance, implying that they’re a group of no-good drug fiends, the bill was implemented to try rand resuscitate a failing budget, and Arizona officials believed that testing could save the state $1.7 million a year.

But in 2012, three years and 87,000 screenings later, only one person had failed a drug test. Total savings from denying that one person benefits? $560. Total benefits paid out in that time? $200 million. Even if we include the savings from cutting benefits to the 1,633 people who didn’t return the pre-test survey, it brings the total to only 0.1 percent of the amount distributed over that period.

Similarly lackluster results have dogged Oklahoma’s drug testing program in which only 29 people failed. When contacted, Oklahoma’s Department of Human Services said it didn’t keep track of the amount the state saved by denying benefits to those who tested positive, but testing fees are estimated to have totaled $74,000.


Poverty in a Cup: Why a Federal Judge Rejected a Florida Drug-Test Requirement

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/poverty-in-a-cup-why-a-federal-judge-rejected-a-florida-drug-test-requirement/282825/

***SNIP


Judge Scrivens rejected these arguments as factually and legally insufficient when she granted a preliminary injunction temporarily halting the law late in 2011. Then the 11th Circuit, one of the most conservative federal appeals courts in the nation, did, too. Language from the 11th Circuit ruling last year that upheld Judge Scrivens' injunction gives you the best sense of how far short Florida fell in meeting its obligation to keep its citizens free from "suspicionless drug testing." The court concluded:

[T]he only pertinent inquiry is whether there is a substantial special need for mandatory, suspicionless drug testing of TANF recipients when there is

- no immediate or direct threat to public safety,

- when those being searched are not directly involved in the frontlines of drug interdiction,

- when there is no public school setting where the government has a responsibility for the care and tutelage of its young students,

- or when there are no dire consequences or grave risk of imminent physical harm as a result of waiting to obtain a warrant if a TANF recipient, or anyone else for that matter, is suspected of violating the law.

We conclude that, on this record, the answer to that question of whether there is a substantial special need for mandatory suspicionless drug testing is “no.”
How did Florida respond to that analysis? By offering "expert" witnesses whose testimony was excluded after Judge Scrivens declared it unreliable, and by offering lay witnesses whose testimony about drug use among TANF recipients was unsupported by statistical information. And by arguing that test results were skewed because Florida welfare recipients were refusing to take the test for fear they would fail. Indeed, the most reliable statistical evidence, Judge Scrivens found, was a study commissioned by the state in 1998, the findings of which vitiated the new law. From her ruling:

In fact, the study commissioned by the State undermines its argument on this point. In 1998, DCF conducted a study known as the Demonstration Project after the State passed legislation requiring the Demonstration Project to test empirically whether individuals who applied for TANF benefits were likely to abuse drugs and whether such abuse affected employment opportunities. In the study, researchers found a lower rate of drug usage among TANF applicants than among current estimates of the population of Florida as a whole

Nor should you have to pee in a cup to get food stamps or other benefits. Two wrongs don't make a right. This country is insane.

... For example those involved I transportation or other safety-related field.

Only If politicians have to do piss tests as well. And publicly post rest results.

"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons..."
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir..."
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."