I was recently sent this online article about the Governor of Florida, Rick Scott, wanting to require welfare recipients to be drug tested before receiving public assistance benefits.
At first read, it sounded OK until I realized that, unfortunately, most of the people getting public assistance are single women with children. Not to mention it's already a given in most welfare programs that if a recipient is suspected of using drugs — because of current behavior or past history of abuse — he or she will be referred for treatment or screening. The whole issue began to smack of unreasonable search and seizure to me; just because you’re seeking public benefits doesn’t mean you don’t have the same kind of protection from unreasonable searches as anybody else. If we give our government the right to strip 4th amendment rights from anyone who benefits from public assistance programs, we may ALL live to regret it. Besides, there are plenty of ways to beat a drug test and people that use know that. Focusing on poor people is easy, they rarely fight back.
The obvious question the Florida Governor needs to be asking himself is if all the people in his State have access to enriching schools, resources for higher education and/or training, justice, healthcare, and employment. Seems to me that ensuring these things would be a much better use of the proposed drug testing money.
The phrase "I don't have to pay for their habit" or "Not with my tax dollars" is simply never true. Whether through the government agencies providing financial assistance or the tax dollars paying for the justice system that handles the crime related to drug use, or the cost of cleaning up parks and cities drowning with homeless or unemployed people with addictions, you ARE paying for them and it is just a technicality of the allocation of your money.
Do you want to support the welfare program or pay for the social toll of these violators when they take their problems into the streets? Either way you pay. That is the cost of living in a society.
It also got me to thinking about the wealthiest among us and how we "little people" pay for rich people's drug problems. Sure we do! They run large corporations and while sniffing the magic white powder make big mistakes that cost lives and money. It's just a larger scale abuse.
6 comments:
Well said Itsmecissy. The "too big to fail" just keep take-take-taking from the "too small to fight back." Their divide and conquer tactics work too, because most people don’t look beneath the surface like you have. They win by making minimum wage workers resent union workers. They win by making middle class tax payers resent the poor who are caught in our social safety nets, and all while they (the CEO’s and Wall Street fat-cats) are the biggest recipients of inflated salaries and lucrative entitlements of all. It never ceases to amaze me how subservient we are to this system. We (speaking of the general population) continue to bow to our television sets and play our roll as human cattle for the corporate interests to herd and slaughter as they see fit.
I can name at least six local politicians who smoke pot. How about testing our politicians before they take office. Gimme a break!
Yes, most welfare recipients are divorced or widowed mothers with children at home who are trying to get assistance so they find a job and get back on their feet again.
To be drug tested is an insult to an already stressful situation. Of course, the governor is a male who has no clue what it is like to raise children alone. I say shoot the bastard right between the legs!
Please reconsider Pam... Just think of the wars we could avoid if our Presidents would just smoke a little pot ;)
We'd avoid a lot more wars if the s.o.b.s got shot between the legs.
Now there's an argument for avoiding war I haven't heard before. Well I guess as long as it's for world peace... start shooting!
So right! I don't know why the allocation concept is so hard for people to grasp. It irks me.
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