What demand ? Welfare is provided by the public because it’s in the public’s best interest, both selfish (because you might lose your job tomorrow and you’ll be happy to have a safety net to tide you over if that happens) and also in a more meta- sense because helping the poorest get back into society and being productive and yadda yadda (or, yes, even just letting them keep on living while doing nothing whatsoever with their days) absolutely beats them turning to crime & robbery because they have literally nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Ok. No disagreement from me on that. I still don’t see why the public can’t make reasonable conditions for receiving certain benefits.
And what do you tell the kids who won’t be getting fed because mommy failed a drug test?
Tell them that mommy didn’t fail the drug test. She refused to take it. (See my previous cite for the conditions for the test.)
I don’t know how to explain that mommy would rather not get any money at all, than be put on an income management program or go thru treatment as part of her job plan. They would have to ask mommy.
Regards,
Shodan
**
Perhaps the argument against this line of thinking is because government has to act as a fiduciary to the tax money of the citizens, and since it costs more money than it saves, it shouldn’t do it.
I’m on the fence about drug testing for other reasons, mainly because they are shit for catching people doing most drugs except for pot. And with the advent of legalized pot and hemp products that contain legal amounts of THC in them, pot tests are about worthless these days anyway. Most of the nasty stuff gets purged out yo’ body really quickly.
I knew of people that were doing meth and coke (and crimes) whilst on drug tested probation. They knew when they had to “pee clean” and would never fail, even through they were on probation for crimes while committed under the influence of meth and cocaine. Funny how law enforcement charged with the safety of the public fucks this up on a daily basis, yet we want to apply this to innocent children. I mean most children have little to do with their economic status, or the drug tests of someone else which are likely to do not much good in the first place.
I think people feel like there is some CSI shit going on, but most urinalysis tests are really garbage. And administered by a for profit company. Wealth redistribution best I ever heard.
Would you support an increase on your taxes (and everyone’s taxes) to offset the additional money spent to cover this? Apparently this costs more than it saves the tax payer, so the money has to come somewhere. It would seem to me that you want to agree to less benefits for everyone that qualifies because you want to use some of that money to make sure you see who is on drugs, knowing that the tests that will be used (they always seem to be urinalysis) are pretty garbage and aren’t useful to determine who is on the scary drugs you are really worried about?
So you’re cool that children will die because their parents refuse a drug test. Got it.
This is a good litmus test for conservative vs liberal. Liberals will tolerate one cheat in order to help fifty truly needy people. Conservatives are perfectly happy refusing to help fifty truly needy in order to punish one cheat.
Watch out, you’re starting to sound like red-state America…
I had no idea that mass starvation was such a problem in Australia.
But if the mother says “my children will die if I don’t take a drug test, but it’s worth it” I think the children have bigger problems than can be addressed with a welfare check.
YMMV.
Regards,
Shodan
You’d have to imagine that the sort of parent who would do such a thing is the sort of parent who would also choose their drug of choice over food for the kids and so they are already in a terrible situation. If someone is in the grip of such a debilitating addiction to that extent then I think there is a point at which state/societal intervention is required.
Not sure what the best course of action is though.
Here’s what you do, you take the money that you save from not helping those that fail/refuse and you use that money to pay for the tests! Sure, it’s a net zero, but in the end we get to fuck over poor people!
I think you are correct - a mother so addicted that she would rather spend her money on drugs than on feeding her children is not a worthy parent, to say the least. That’s kind of the point of the income management program - dole the money out piecemeal and pay for rent and food first.
So Drug Addict Mommy can refuse the test, and then she doesn’t get any welfare money to spend on drugs, or fail the drug test and go on the income management program and then DAM has less money to spend on drugs and her children have at least a chance of being fed and housed. But DAM prefers no money to less money for drugs and more to feed her children. “Societal intervention” in the form of just giving her the money anyway and then she spends it on drugs is not what is required, IMO. Take her children away? I don’t know, but in the extreme condition that BobLibDem suggests, where mommy would rather feed her habit than her children, I would hope that is considered as an option. In less extreme situations? Fuck you, DAM - your children are more important than drugs. Get used to the idea.
I don’t think that non-voluntary drug treatment works any better in Australia than it does anywhere else. So maybe even pressuring welfare recipients into treatment isn’t going to help either. Neither is continuing to fund mommy’s drug habit without conditions - that’s enabling.
Maybe this program will help. Probably it won’t - substance abuse and chronic poverty have no reliable, large-scale solutions. But this notion that the Aussies can’t do anything but hand over the welfare because children will starve otherwise is kind of silly. If you are so addicted to drugs (or stupid) that you would rather do without the money than take the test, then you are so addicted to drugs (or stupid) that your children are screwed anyway.
Regards,
Shodan
Keyword being “reasonable”.
Forcing everyone to take a piss test every so often on the off chance that maybe they’re junkies (because the poor are like that, dontcherknow) is offensive on top of being a waste of money - and even IF it were a feel-good, get-them-help measure (which it isn’t), it wouldn’t help because coercion is no solution. Putting drug addicts under financial monitoring or kicking them off welfare won’t get them off drugs - at best it’ll teach them to either scam piss tests, or find other ways to get drug money which may or may not involve taking shit wot weren’t nailed down. Drug addiction is not a convenience you can just turn off - and 99% of the time serious drug addiction is merely the symptom or mask for much deeper, complicated issues anyway.
So these “conditions” are useless to address the problem which they purport to (which is either “helping addicts” or “kicking them dirty moochers off mah tax teat !”), put more burdens on the shoulders of all of the poor, and ultimately only benefit drug labs (and the people drug labs kick money back to, natch). These are not reasonable, period.
Sounds like a damn good reason to send addicts to rehab, to me. They get healthier, they get into a position where they can support themselves and work, and they’ll be far less likely to resort to crime to feed their habits. It’s a win/win for the individuals and for society, just like welfare as a whole is.
In fact, provide proper rehab and addiction treatment for anyone who needs it, not just those on benefits, as should be done with all health care.
Drug testing catches mainly potheads, who by and large are not addicts that require treatment.
As I said before, rehab can only work if the person actually, truly, deeply wants to kick their demons. Not all addicts do, and fewer even trust themselves to be able to (which leads them to self-sabotage).
If it is imposed without that will to get better, it will feel like something to be avoided and cheated and pretended and scammed. Freedom from addiction is like any freedom - it can be sought and it can be conquered, but it cannot be given, much less forced upon.
ETA : that being said, I do agree with you that every inch of help should be extended to those who express a want or need for it.
Why is it okay for kids to be raised with drug addicts for parents? Drug addicts are neglectful, dangerous, unstable, and desperate for money. Some of them may even try to pimp their children out to fund their drug addiction.
Why would liberals be okay with children being raped for drug money instead of sending poor people to free rehab?
Some studieshave shown that coerced rehab works as well or better than voluntary rehab.
You can find “some studies” for anything. And even the one you cite:
So “maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t, we can’t really tell”. Academics in a nutshell 
(not that it’s a bad thing, mind you)
Based on my experience with drug addicts (I worked in the rehab field for four years) that’s not going to work, either. Someone so addicted to drugs that they’ll put them ahead of food is not going improve with money handed out on an “income management” program. Hell, if you just gave them boxed meals instead of money they’d by trying to find a way to sell those boxed meals for money for drugs.
The problem is, even locking such a person up and forcing treatment isn’t going to have much, if any, effect. You’ll have a temporarily sober addict who will, upon release, immediately go to their drug of choice again.
You can lock anyone up away from drugs and get them “clean” in a physical sense of not having drugs in their system, but that doesn’t actually cure addiction. Until the addict WANTS to get better, and is willing to put in some hard work, they aren’t going to get clean or stay clean.
After four years of working at a clinic I don’t have an easy answer for any of this. Even among those willing to work at the process, some people will get better on their first round of treatment, most will require multiple attempts prior to success, and some are just never going to get better ever.
Yeah, I just hope Drug Addicted Parent (why are you assuming it’s always a mother involved in drugs…?) doesn’t decide to start farming the kids out sex toys in order to obtain money. Doesn’t happen every time… but it does happen. Or the kids, being hungry, start knocking on neighbors’ doors and asking for food. Or even both.
This will probably shock some who consider me a liberal, but I do want that option on the table. Hell, I have actually helped to write letters to judges saying PLEASE TAKE THIS PERSON’S KID(S) AWAY BEFORE ANY MORE KIDS DIE IN THAT HOME. There are some people who should not be permitted access to children, even their own, and once more stop focusing on just mothers, ANY relative in the home could be involved in this sort of horror.
If a woman can’t drop her pimping/neglectful/abusive boyfriend/husband/baby-daddy/whatever for her children’s safety then take the children away because they’re in danger. An adult can make stupid life choices for their own selves, but they don’t have the right to jeopardize kids. Ditto for parents that can’t do the same for their own addicted/abusive/neglectful parents/kids’ grandparent, or aunts/uncles, or “family friend” crashing on the couch or in the spare room.
After reading coroner’s reports (because the paperwork at the clinic was my job) about kids hung by mama, or scaled to death by dad, or rented out as a fuck toy, or about how some deviant and his buddies thought it would be hilarious to shoot up an eight year old with heroin and watch… you start asking why “parents’ rights” seem to outweigh the best interests of children so goddamned often, and you stop believing fairy tales that somehow a biological/genetic relationship magically means the adult in this sordid situation is going to actually give a damn about another human being (some of those adults clearly don’t even give a damn about themselves).
In complete contrast to the above… there actually ARE addicts that can put their kids first, or at least function as minimally competent parents. They aren’t great parents, but they are competent. I’ve seen pregnant addicts in treatment actually give up drugs for the remainder of their pregnancy for the sake of their baby… and then relapse within less than a day once they’ve given birth because while they’ll do it for their baby they won’t stay clean for themselves. I’ve seen long-term addicts who managed to raise kids that stayed in school, went to college, and became sober, professional-class adults. Definitely I’m in favor of offering support and assistance to those folks, because behaving well enough to keep their kids can be a big motivator for them. It can work. It doesn’t always work (there is NO drug treatment technique that works all the time, far from it), but I feel it’s worth the attempt because some of those crowd are going to get better. If the parents are able to take care of the kids then the kids should stay with them (but yeah, checking in from time to time might be a really good idea).
If mummy is that far gone she’s going to find something besides just public aid to pay for the drugs because illicit drugs are expensive.
It would help if people remembered that while there is overlap between the two groups they are not the same group. Plenty of lifetime sober poor people, plenty of wealthy drug addicts (although they don’t always stay wealthy give how much of it goes up their nose/in their veins/whatever).
The experience in Florida was that the cost of the testing vastly outweighed any benefit in finding addicts (a handful at most). So it was discontinued. I am not aware of any place where testing the poor for drugs did anyone any good, other than benefit the companies doing the testing.
Really, you’d be better off testing the folks on Wall Street (or another nation’s equivalent), celebrities, and politicians. No doubt you’d find more than a few addicts there - the difference being they can afford lawyers as well as drugs, at least as long as they remain “functional” addicts able to keep up appearances, which is a lot easier when you have money. When the money is all gone they are, of course, just as pathetic, desperate, despicable, etc. as those who started poor.