Should People on Public Assistance Be Required to Pass Drug Screenings?

Should people on public assistance be required to pass drug screenings?

Almost all jobs and companies require a drug test before hiring you as an employee. So there is no reason that a person requesting public assistance should not be required to pass a drug test as well. I don't mean random drug testing either make it a requirement to receive their benefits. This country has made a living on throwing money down the toilet and letting the taxpayers clean it up. Enough is enough if we sit back and let these people freely collect money to support their habits it is plain ignorance on our part. If people are not willing to help themselves why should we taxpayers help them? Paying for someone's drug habit was not on my tax proposal this year. Now I know most of these system rats will cry privacy and cite their constitutional rights. Want privacy? Then have your privacy without public assistance that simple. And from the information I have found through research I am not alone in these thoughts.

More states are pushing for testing participants currently using public assistance. Twenty-seven U.S. states, as red as Arizona and Georgia and as blue as New York and California, may soon be adding another requirement for those applying for aid such as unemployment or welfare: Being clean. More than half the states in this country are considering legislation which would require recipients of public assistance to pass a drug test before getting their handout from the government (Cafferty, 2011, CNN.com). Seems to me that more states are seriously looking into this problem and it is a very widespread issue. If left unresolved these issues could really cripple our already fledging economic state. I really see no other answer for this situation but to react and resolve it as quickly as possible.

States I researched on their internet sites yielded some interesting results and resolutions on their voting tables. South Carolina state senate, for example, would suspend unemployment checks to any person who didn't get a job because of a failed drug test. Arizona would call for random drug testing for all people who receive welfare. In Massachusetts, a bill has been introduced requiring random drug tests for recipients of public assistance who have prior drug convictions. If you fail the drug test, you would be placed by the state into a rehab program because of the state's mandatory health care program. These are proposed bills by these states and of course, if these measures pass, they will likely be opposed by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and others. On the other hand, I don't want my tax money being used to buy illegal drugs. And that seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Florida Governor Rick Scott is standing by his state's new policy of drug testing welfare recipients even after the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the scheme in a lawsuit and just 2.5 percent of beneficiaries flunked the first round of tests in July. Scott not being deterred hired an organization to do a study on the drug testing effect on the state of Florida. A report by the Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative think tank in Florida, found Scott's drug testing plan