Do you think that welfare recipients should be drug tested?

Should welfare recipients get tested for drugs?

  • Yes

  • No

  • PItbull the rapper


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Idk man it may be worth it. Idk how they do it but I know a lot of people in my home county (Imperial Valley) are welfare vets. They've been on it all there lives, collecting section 8 and the whole 9. With new Cadys and suvs shamelessly parked on their driveways. I know this sounds ridiculous, I thought so to when I grew up and realized what was going on, but that was my reality.

Anyways I got pretty off topic there. My point is these are the same people I would see in mexicali on weekends, doing coke, getting bottle service, and sand blasting hookers. So yeah I'd like to see em drug tested.
 
Catching 4% of that 52 million would be 2 million people. Assuming $200/month in bennies, that amounts to 4.5 billion. Exactly how much do you think this testing would cost? Trillions? Quadrillions?
From multiple real-world implementations it appears.


So you're just going to send those test strips to the welfare recipients and ask them to pee on it and send back the results? No, you need a qualified tester/handler for test. Those people cost money. So now we're at significantly more than 20$.

How often are you going to test the recipients? once a year, once a week? That's going to add up.

As of 2012 52.2 million people were receiving some form of government assistance.

If it cost 1$ per test, per person and you tested each person 3 times a year you would be looking at 150 million per year for this drug testing.
Catching 4% of recipients would gross 5 billion.
And I guarantee it will cost more than 1$ per test, once you're paying the salaries of the testers, the receptionists, procurement, storage, disposal, data entry and maintenence, office supplies, rental fees, insurance, everything else that goes along with setting up a federally-mandated nation-wide program.
It doesn't take an entire team. The welfare office already has a receptionist. What procurement, storage, disposal, data entry, etc etc etc? You come in, piss in a cup, have it tested, then throw it in the toilet. You're talking out your ass here....
So yeah, it will be fucking expensive. In states that have implement drug-testing for welfare recipients they have caught less than a handful of people using drugs.
Yes, it will cost a lot. It will save orders of magnitude more.
You think you are going to catch so many drug-users nation-wide and kick them off welfare that you are going to save hundreds of millions of dollars each year?
See above math
That's assuming you go with a one-strike no appeal rule which will never fly in court. There will need to be a challenge/appeal system, B-samples, etc... which will cost even more fucking money.
The recipient would pay for an appeal, refundable if negative.
You don't have a fucking clue, jesus fucking christ.
You didn't bother to do simple math and Im the idiot?
Let's get government spending under control but the problem isn't poor people taking too much money FFS.
 
Multiply that "under $20" by 68 million. So you want to spend over a billion dollars to bust 2-4% of people tested?

Sounds like a sound fiscal plan, if you're an executive or shareholder for a drug testing company.
Certainly not for the American taxpayer.
The drug test Im referring to is a urine sample strip with instant results. Why does it need send to a testing facility?
 
Waste of government resources.

Several states have tried, they end up spending more than they would have saved not testing.
Not only that, but the percentage of people that popped was incredibly low. Waste of time and money.
 
Of course. We wouldn't want to help anybody with an addiction. god forbid we did that. Let's just help the perfectly clean people that can't get their shit together.
 
The drug test Im referring to is a urine sample strip with instant results. Why does it need send to a testing facility?

Not sure where you get me mentioning about sending to a test facility. When i said drug testing companies, i'm talking about the companies that make the strip tests.

You said the test strips cost less than $20, so i showed you what the approximate cost would be to test all recipients once. Of course, drug testing someone once is also a waste of money as anyone can get clean prior to pass the cheaper urine tests. Shit, i had to take a urine test for my job. Don't mean i can piss clean today.
 
Catching 4% of that 52 million would be 2 million people. Assuming $200/month in bennies, that amounts to 4.5 billion. Exactly how much do you think this testing would cost? Trillions? Quadrillions?

See, this is a better stat and 4.5 billion is greater than 1 billion.
But once again, just because someone can pass a piss drug test once doesn't mean they're not a drug addict or drug user. If you're truly trying to eliminate drug users from welfare, you'd have to test them much more than once in the beginning, or use the better more expensive testing techniques and not the simple strip test that can be easily passed.
 
Catching 4% of that 52 million would be 2 million people. Assuming $200/month in bennies, that amounts to 4.5 billion. Exactly how much do you think this testing would cost? Trillions? Quadrillions?

Fair point. If you got 4% you would have a one time savings of 4.5 billion but you would have to expect that figure to drop significantly in following years I think.

I figure the cost of the program would have to be in the hundreds of millions per year. Over the long run the number of people caught each year (your savings) would diminish, but the cost of the program would not.

So let's kick these 2 million people who may be drug addicts off welfare. Then what? Force them into rehab? Can't do that because that negates the savings. So now you have 2 million more people on the streets without a way to pay for food, and who may have addictions they will need to support. I can't see any way that would not result in an increased crime-rate and homelessness.
 
Punching down is a sign of low self-esteem, and I'm saying that technically. People with high self esteem self-enhance. People with low self esteem don't self-enhance because they have a poorly conceptualized self-concept and are unsure whether they can defend positive self views. The only way they can enhance is indirectly, for instance by praising a group with which they're indirectly connected (e.g. "Egyptians were black, and amazing. I'm black. We wuz kings," or "Europeans of old were amazing. I'm not amazing, but I'm European.") Another way is to punch down and ridicule people who are lower than you e.g. "I suck, but you suck MORE! Therefore I can't be that bad."
 
If I have to pass a drug test just for the opportunity to earn money, I don't see why it's a big deal for someone who is accepting others hard earned money to take one.
 
Id be fine with testing at application. There really needs to be limits on how long one can get welfare.(not the sick/disabled, normal able bodied people)
As far as cheating the urine tests, i dont see much of a problem. The kind of people wholl be getting caught arent, imo, the kind clever or motivated enough to do this.
The price of the strips are
$20 for 10, and thats retail.

Not sure where you get me mentioning about sending to a test facility. When i said drug testing companies, i'm talking about the companies that make the strip tests.

You said the test strips cost less than $20, so i showed you what the approximate cost would be to test all recipients once. Of course, drug testing someone once is also a waste of money as anyone can get clean prior to pass the cheaper urine tests. Shit, i had to take a urine test for my job. Don't mean i can piss clean today.
 
Youre assuming the reason someone wants drug testing is bitterness.
Perhaps when someone has fallen on hard times their behaviors need changed. If youve reached a point in life where youre on public assistance, drugs are nothing but an unneccasary burden. They cost money, limit your employment opportunities, and put you in a horrible mental state.
Theyre fun when things are good, but when times are tough become a means escaping current problems. Thing is, the problems are still there getting ignored.
Been there, done that.

Punching down is a sign of low self-esteem, and I'm saying that technically. People with high self esteem self-enhance. People with low self esteem don't self-enhance because they have a poorly conceptualized self-concept and are unsure whether they can defend positive self views. The only way they can enhance is indirectly, for instance by praising a group with which they're indirectly connected (e.g. "Egyptians were black, and amazing. I'm black. We wuz kings," or "Europeans of old were amazing. I'm not amazing, but I'm European.") Another way is to punch down and ridicule people who are lower than you e.g. "I suck, but you suck MORE! Therefore I can't be that bad."
 
a better question for the War Room

In theory it sounds simple, but the execution would be a major pain. You'd have to spend a large amount of tax dollars to prevent what is statistically a low portion of addicts on welfare. It wouldn't be a good cost/benefit investment.
 
IMO it's probably unrealistic and too costly to drug test everyone, but random drug testing should definitely be a part of receiving welfare.

Minimum 20 hours commity service every week also seems reasonable.
 
Replies are in the quote. Gotta go back to work, so thx for being civil.
For the record, i dont disagree that after corruption/govt incompetance/cheating, there may not be a savings. But its possible
Fair point. If you got 4% you would have a one time savings of 4.5 billion but you would have to expect that figure to drop significantly in following years I think.

I figure the cost of the program would have to be in the hundreds of millions per year. Over the long run the number of people caught each year (your savings) would diminish, but the cost of the program would not.
Id taper off the program once the results indicated it was time.
I think it was arizone that had 2k people not show up for the drug test when it was started, which arent counted in the savings. You would need to account the test itself as a deterrent as well. Compare enrollment numbers by year.

So let's kick these 2 million people who may be drug addicts off welfare. Then what? Force them into rehab? Can't do that because that negates the savings. So now you have 2 million more people on the streets without a way to pay for food, and who may have addictions they will need to support. I can't see any way that would not result in an increased crime-rate and homelessness.
If someone cant get off drugs long enough to pass a test when the other option is homelessness, they legit need help. Send em to rehab. If they just dont care enough to get off shit to pass the tests, they dont need help that bad. Imo.
 
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-Tapering is possible but in the long run you'd probably need to re-assess regularly leading to a cycle of increase/decreased testing. Which may work.

-How do you differentiate between someone who can't and someone who won't?

I would support testing and directing to rehab to help people kick their addiction and become employable, that's a different argument than just kicking them off welfare which I think would lead to an overall negative for society.
 
it's gonna fuck everthing up if they don't get a little government money to buy some drugs. more crime.
 
Of course, they want our money for free. At least we can vet them. Is that really too much to ask? Really?
 
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