96% of Florida welfare cash recipients pass drug tests.Follow

No silly you're supposed to hang them...

For serious though, I'm not really sure there's a best answer for how to deal with the people who are just a drain on society.

Personally, I think we should drug test every Over The Road truck driver and fire anyone whose system wasn't full of crank or meth or blow.


Seriously, 80,000lbs of rolling death, driving 10-11 hours a day, everyday. Dem boys need to be wide the **** awake if ya ask me, but no one did, so I'll just mosey along now.

I have a question. What happens when one of these people fails a drug test? Are they just cut off, or offered treatment or something?

No. We want people with drug problems to address the problems so that their lives will improve. The alternative is what? Giving people with drug problems free food and housing anyway without even attempting to get them to quit?

Using the statistics in the OP, one solution helps nudge 96% of those receiving welfare to not use drugs, perhaps helping them improve their lives in the long run, with the downside that 4% wont get government benefits and may end out in jail. The other solution gives up on 100% of them.

I'll ask again: Why do you hate poor people?

If the people who fail are given an option for treatment, I'd be fine with it. Addiction isn't something just solved by snapping your fingers.

No. You are lying. We all know your view on the poor.

Nice try, though.

Well, we know your version of my view at least! Thats something I suppose.

Edited, Aug 29th 2011 3:16pm by gbaji

You're still just looking at the symptoms. You're also still playing the "your solution isn't perfect" game. What's the alternative? We actively expend resources to help keep children in homes with drug addicted parents? If the cost of getting a thousand parents to stop using drugs for the sake of ensuring that their children are fed and housed is that 20 parents will continue to use drugs, but now can't get welfare and will likely lose their children somehow, I'm frankly not seeing that as a problem.

Yeah. It sucks for the kids of those 20 parents, but it would have sucked for them anyway. And it may just be better to get them out of those homes earlier rather than later. And in the meantime, we potentially make things much much better for many times more kids. It's not "perfect", but it's "better".

Would be less costly and less cruel to just let them overdose on drugs in that case.

Shador, why do you even bother having opinions?

Serious question.

But that goes in both directions, right? Neither is an ideal result, but we are ultimately making that choice anyway. Looking the other way and pretending that we haven't made a choice by default just seems incredibly stupid. We're kidding ourselves.

And again, this only addresses the case of parents who can't or wont stop using drugs (even if just sufficiently to pass the tests). For the other 96%, we've either not impacted them at all *or* we've provided that nudge to not use drugs (or use them less). That's a net positive IMO. So we have a significant positive on one hand (some likely large number of kids who will be with their parents, but who's parents wont be using drugs who might have otherwise), and at worst a break even among the 4% who will still use drugs.

Even if the results for taking children out of a drug users home versus keeping them in that home and providing them welfare are equal (and I'm pretty sure they aren't), we should still do this. You'd have to show that the negative effects of forcing that smaller group into choosing their drugs or their children is so much greater that it outweighs the general benefits to the larger group. And I just don't think you (or anyone) can make a strong case for that.



Yup. So in the absence of overwhelmingly strong evidence that kids are better off living off welfare in the home of a drug addicted parent than being separated from that parent, we should do the drug tests.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the guy working 50 hours a week isn't collecting a welfare check, so it's not quite the dilemma you make it out to be.

Just so you know, working 50 hours a week every week of the year at minimum wage in most states puts you below the poverty line for a family of four (assuming this person is the sole income provider).