It’s Official: Drug Testing Welfare Applicants FAILS by Costing More Than Twice What It Saves

[KamaAina]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/its-official-drug-testing-welfare-applicants-fails-costing-more-twice-what-it

In an ostensible attempt to combat the increasing welfare state in America, the conservatives moved to begin drug testing applicants to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The program was hailed by the right as the be all end all to those “lazy welfare recipients sitting at home and smoking their drugs all day. ”

Advocates of the legislation claim that they will save money by getting those “evil drug users off of the government teet, thereby reducing the expense of the welfare system. Sounds great doesn’t it?...

The most recent state to show the abject failure of mixing the War on Drugs with the Welfare State is Tennessee. After spending copious amounts of taxpayer dollars to catch TANF recipients in their ploy to use drugs while receiving aid to feed their children, they uncovered drug use in less the 0.2 percent of all applicants....

However, the costs are far more than just the drug test items. The state does not take into account the cost of staff to conduct the testing, the paperwork, the cost to notify the people or any of the other external costs of looking into people’s urine for evil traces of drugs.

[questionseverything]

1. isn't the fail rate of the test higher than .2?

[longship]

3. Probably a lot higher.

Which means that false negatives will be overwhelmed by false positives just from the statistics alone.

Drug testing just does not work.

[Half-Century Man]

2. The reason to do it is to shame those who would seek help.

To repay donors with fat governmental contracts to do or supply the test kits.
To burn up TANF funds with administrative cost to justify shutting it down entirely as ineffective; thus freeing up funding for tax relief.

To make more people desperate, hungry, scared, and therefore easier to manipulate.

[FiveGoodMen]

7. Exactly

Was never about cost.

[Skittles]

4. CAN WE PLEASE DRUG TEST THE PEOPLE WHO START WARS AND CRASH THE ECONOMY

SERIOUSLY

THEY ARE THE PEOPLE COSTING US MONEY

[Blue Owl]

5. Suck it fuckos

Scott Walker and Rick Scott come to mind...

[mindwalker_i]

6. Do you really think that matters?

Do you think the people who passed the laws to drug-test welfare recipients care about cost?

[progressoid]

11. Yep. I pointed this out to a RWer who supposedly wants fiscal responsibility.

He tried to dodge the issue because he couldn't admit that he was wrong.

[Fairgo]

8. Funny thing...

If drugs weren't illegal. And drug abuse was a public health issue not a law enforcement one. I'm guessing the systemic cost of substance use would collapse, maybe even disappear... given that the side effects of the war on drugs sustain and expand poverty, which feeds drug use in a never ending cycle of misery.

By the way, what ever happened to the war on poverty? Did we lose that one?

[Takket]

9. when will the "government waste" hating GOP demand we put a stop to this?

[KamaAina]

10. On the twelfth.

Of Never.