Drugs Don’t Pay

Thirty-six states have proposed legislation requiring drug testing in order to receive state assistance (food stamps, unemployment benefits, public housing, welfare). Florida even requires that the people applying pay for their own drug test!

When will people learn that drug testing is a violation of privacy? But it’s become so common in the workplace that people just throw up their hands and accept it. Detractors will say, well if you don’t have anything to hide you shouldn’t be worried. But that’s not the point. The point is that someone doesn’t trust you, someone thinks you need to prove your innocence when you haven’t committed a crime. What a person does in his personal life is just that — personal.

Ironically, most people who have failed the drug test to obtain assistance tested positive for marijuana. Yeah. Let’s withhold unemployment benefits to the gal who took a toke sometime within the last month. Why should your tax dollars go to support her drug habit? Never mind her rights to receive aid or the fact that it’s her tax dollars too. I’m sure it’s an important life lesson for her. She’ll thank us later.