The elderly are the biggest welfare queens in this country. They eat up tons of money via medicaid, medicare and SS.
You think children are better off in the terrible foster care system than with their parents who love them, but happen to have a drug problem? Clearly you aren’t familiar with the concept of functional addicts, which is a category most addicts fall into. You can be addicted to drugs and still be a good parent. Hell, even if they were only borderline acceptable parents they’ll still take better care of their kids than “the system” would.
I meant alcoholics, not anyone who ever drinks.
No both of those groups should be institutionalzied or at least treated.
There is still state welfare.
Simply throwing money at addicts will hurt them more. If we truly cared for them we would treat them physically, mentally, and spiritually.
That’s why addicts should be treated not given money, that won’t help them at all.
Drug tests, alcohol tests, check for steroids, make sure they are not overweight, check their high school transcripts, check out all their family members for bad genes, yep do them all . These people obviously have given up all their rights and dignity. Sic them when they are down.
I’m opposed. I don’t see any valid government purpose being served by such a policy.
If people have a valid need for welfare, they still have it regardless of whether or not they’re on drugs. If you feel people who are receiving welfare don’t have a valid need, it’s a separate issue that doesn’t involve drugs.
What are you going to do about a single mother who’s a drug user? Are you going to let her child go hungry because she’s afraid to face a drug test?
Are you going to test people who receive Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid? Unemployment and disability insurance? Farm subsidies and disaster relief? You going to make everyone submit a urine specimen before you give them a check? Or are you only going to test the people who receive the bad kind of government assistance?
As far as an issue of curtailing drug use, I say let law enforcement enforce laws. There’s no legal justification of doing a major sweep of an entire category of people just because we can.
Drug tests cost money - a decent drug test costs about fifty dollars. And that’s not counting all of the extra people you’re going to have to hire to administer these tests. And the police, court, and prison resources you’re going to need for the drug users you catch.
A lot of welfare is handled by the states. What are you going to do about those states that don’t want the added expense of drug testing (or the expense of dealing with newfound drug users)? Are you going to have the federal government step in and start telling the states how to run their welfare systems?
It’s clear that you don’t get it. Drug treatment, as it stands right now, is a joke. The 12-step model is not enough for most people, and the few alternatives to it aren’t much better.
Before you go terrorizing addicts with the threat of taking their children and throwing them into institutions you better do some research into what all of that would actually entail. The cost of enforcing all of these ideas would be astronomical, and it would do more harm than good.
In Florida, where such a law was recently passed, it does cost more to do the testing than it saves by not paying welfare to those who test positive for drugs. So basically, the money that would have gone to some needy drug-users will go to some providers of drug tests.*:eek:
But the major problem I have with the new law is that if someone fails just one drug test, they lose benefits for one year, or six months if they complete (and somehow pay for out of their own pocket) a drug-treatment program. But drug tests aren’t infallible. One false positive or one lab screwup can cause someone who is completely clean and innocent to lose much needed assistance, meager as that assistance may be.
*:eek: Surprise, surprise, the FL governor Rick Scott was found to own $63million in shares in a prominent company that provided walk-in drug testing. :rolleyes: Once that little fact got out and caused an uproar, he tried transferring the shares to his wife. When that ploy proved insufficient to quell the uproar, he finally gave in and sold the shares.
You can’t force treatment on someone. It doesn’t work, sadly.
Is being poor against the law? Is having a financial disaster in your life probable cause?
Being the beneficiary of government programs should not require citizens to give up basic constitutional rights.
Did we not just do this in another thread? Ah, here it is:
As I mentioned in this thread, effective addiction treatment is very, very expensive. Much more expensive than welfare. And since welfare workers aren’t trained as addiction counselors, you’d be turning the welfare system’s mandate into “find excuses to not help people”. This is not the magic bullet that will make an addict into a rational person who will clean up and get a job.
Now if there was a pill like antabuse that could cause an aversion to drugs and if it wasn’t a horrible invasion of privacy to force someone to take it, I could see that being a part of a more stringent system. But this would be somewhat akin to making pregnant welfare moms have mandatory abortions (no one in the US objects to aborting the hopeless children of the poor, do they?) and I can see ACLU-sponsored lawsuits from a mile away.
Anyhow, I think those who feel welfare is such a great ride for addicts should buy a vial of crack rock and hop on the train. Take the welfare challenge! If it’s such a great and rewarding life, why would you slave away in a cubicle or cleaning toilets when you could live like Ol’ Dirty Bastard, driving your limo and twenty children to the welfare office to pick up your food stamps? (Oh wait, ODB is dead… but he lived large while he was alive, all because of the endless benevolence of a welfare system that is built around supporting bad habits!)
Part of the job of Government, in my opinion most of the job, is to make a nice society where people are happy and life is good. Of course they can’t do this by spending more money than they have, at least not in the long term so it needs to be sustainable in all ways.
One the reasons I am happy to pay taxes and give money to undesirables (not all welfare recipients are undesirables, but some are) is that I don’t want them mugging me on the street, breaking into my car or home etc. Some people are just not a good fit for our society, and we completely ignore those people at our peril.
On top of that I think the way the Government treats its citizens reflects back on to society, it’s one of the reason I am against the death penalty it makes a harsher society when the state kills people it doesn’t like.
Principles are complicated, and while the principle of not giving money to people who don’t deserve it sounds reasonable, it has many, many ramifications throughout society which most societies have decided are not beneficial. You have to be very careful with your principles when they are to be applied to the real world.
I get so angry at people who have the misconception that welfare is for drunks and druggies. I had a baby in October, the birth was partially paid by state medicaid, and only what my private insurance did not cover (maybe 1500 of 15k) . While still on medical leave waiting for surgery related to said thing my baby’s father had a life moment and was out of work for 2 months. I applied for food stamps. the whole process was smelly and uncomfortable enough without dropping my drawers in such a filthy place, and believe me they don’t just give you foodstamps. you have to produce paperwork showing what you make and spend every month, and the verify with the work number. It took 30ish hours to get it all in! Thanks to the folks who pointed out the impracticality and expense of such a program.
It’s great that your country has made such a thing available, help to people when they need it. But you must understand the right-wing argument that you shouldn’t have a baby if you can’t afford it, and if you haven’t go enough savings to cover a family illness at the same time. It’s hard to argue with that viewpoint, apart from you can’t expect that of everyone for all kinds of reason and there will always be people who need help, so what should we do.
Totally against it. The cost alone would grossly outweigh any money saved by kicking drug users off the rolls.
This is just a hunch, I have no cite … but I wouldn’t be surprised if, percentage wise, Congress has a higher rate of illegal drug users than welfare recipients.
Not that Congress would EVER drop their drawers to submit to such a blatant invasion of their privacy. It’s ok for the unwashed, but they’re above that sort of thing, see … never mind that they’re paid 6 figure salaries whether they show up to work or not.
You could be right, but people may argue that congress isn’t using tax money to pay for their drugs. I think many would say that drugs aren’t a problem if the users can pay for them for the rest of their lives. Not necessarily true of course, drugs have all kinds of negative effects, but there is a difference between an addict with no money and an addict with lots of money.
And the difference between being forcibly institutionalized and being jailed is what exactly?
CMC fnord!
People who are opposed…you really want the government (your tax dollars) to pick up the living expenses for people who use drugs? You don’t see how some people might have some issue with that.
Let’s say, unemployed person uses drugs, therefore effectively keeping him away from a straight job (due to drug testing at the prospective employer). You are OK with paying this guy’s unemployment checks for 99 weeks, even though he has no shot at improving his situation?
Let’s put it this way. Threatening benefit dollars may give people incentive to stop using, if they stop using, by definition their lives are improved, even if they are not able to find a legit job. The people who oppose seem to say it’s not worth the cost trying to help these people become more productive members of society.
You are just giving up on a certain sub-sub-sub-section of society and forcing legit taxpayers to pay for it.
Let me say again, taking away benefits should not be the result of the first failed drug test, counselling should be the first choice. But after a person demonstrates they can’t get off the drugs, you have to have some further punishment, not just a slap on the wrist.
No, I don’t like giving money to druggies, but I do accept that every society will have useless people in it and that something has to be done with those useless people.
There isn’t a way to make them better people, all we can do is educate on the pitfalls of drugs, try to keep drugs off the streets, and offer help to those who want to get off drugs.
If we just lock up druggies in prison or force them to take medical care will we solve the problem and will it cost less. I suspect giving them money to keep them quiet is the cheapest way to handle this situation, other than killing them of course but I don’t think we’d like to go down that route.
So same question I asked already. Would you support drug testing as a condition for receiving Social Security?
What is so special about welfare recipients? Tales of welfare queens are nothing more than an attempts to misdirect people away from the real waste in government spending.
If there is a problem with people using government money on drugs then the rule should cover everybody. Who is to say the farmer who receives subsidies doesn’t waste it on drugs, or the student asking for a loan or the CEO looking for a billion dollar bailout. What percentage of that bailout money went to hookers and blow I wonder? Or is only those on welfare who waste money?