Bricker, I don’t know why I quoted you, as my post was not in reponse to your post specifically.
Can I demand a drug test for any congressman who proposes such a law?
Already been done. There was a similar law proposed in Congress, and someone on the relevant committee brought in a bunch of sample cups and invited all the committee members to provide a sample. Not one member was willing to provide one. I think this was back in the Reagan or Bush I days.
Well, not until after your sentencing, anyway.
Ya know, if you’re going to take someone’s only income away for using drugs, it’s a pretty damn sure bet that will drive them to commit worse crimes – theft, for instance.
When you add in social security, medicare, medicaid, SCHIP, unemployment insurance, AFDC, food stamps, etc. you are looking at random urine tests for 100-150 million people. I’m not even including all the people who benefit from public education.
1/8 of this country is on food stamps alone. About 1/6 is on medicare, another 1/6 on medicaid (there is some overlap).
Of course the welfare the (obviously white, conservative, christian) author of this email was thinking of was the kind where a single black mother has 6 kids on public assistance. He wasn’t thinking of the elderly on medicare and social security as an example.
I seriously hope this simpleton loses his job and has to go on food stamps.
It’s worth noting that there are few treatment options available to poor drug addicts. Many public drug-treatment programs have waiting lists that are literally years long. How, exactly, are people supposed to get off drugs without the medical and psychological support that it requires? The money spent of these drug tests would be far better spent on drug-treatment programs.
I don’t think a lot of people realize how stubborn and cunning a really serious druggie can be. Drug testing will catch the single black welfare mom with six children–the one who had the six children with her late husband, and took three puffs on a joint that a friend passed her when she was crying on what should have been her wedding anniversary. It won’t catch her neighbor, Sister Morphine the poly-substance abuser. She’ll just cajole someone else to pee in a bottle for her and duct tape the bottle of clean urine to her leg before going to the drug test.
Nobody said it was. The problem is that the email cited in the OP is stupid.
If you want to cut off public money from people doing illegal things, why is the email cited in the OP targeting people on welfare? MOST people get public money or assistance in one form or another; Medicare, Medicaid, prescription drug benefits, various forms of social assistance, tax breaks, public education, Social Security, grants, subsidies, and on and on. Why target one particular, small group out of all those people?
Furthermore, why target drug usage, when it’s such an expensive thing to chase down? Why not cut off public assistance to people who get speeding tickets and other moving violations? Isn’t that illegal activity? It’d be much easier and cheaper to do, too, since you’ve already got the violations in a public database.
Some old-fashioned can-do attitude and a touch of American spirit?
I love this and think everyone would revel in a repeat should this be proposed seriously. It is hardly thrilling to think about tax dollars going to drugs, but it’s further down the list than coke-sniffing senators and even pilots who are drunk on the job (however rare it may be), in terms of someone’s lifestyle choices affecting me.
Based on the Starving Artist Straight Dope System of Debate Scoring ™, I need to first say that this email is nonsense. Responding to it is not meant to give it substance.
We do that in the form of jail. Well, except then we exchange freedom for free health care, free food and shelter, a gym membership, and rape.
As a point of information: Do we actually have any sense of what this might cost? What does an urine analysis cost? Would we need to specifically test all samples or could we simply require it, but test randomly (say 1 in 10 or 1 in 100). The mere threat of testing could be enough. Is anyone willing to find the number of welfare recipients, and the cost of a urine analysis?
As a point of snarkyness: My wife is heavily invested in a company that performs urine analysis, it would really help us out if the government awarded a no-bid contract to that company. Then that money would trickle down to everyone indirectly. Seems like a perfect use of federal tax revenue.
"In order to get that paycheck, in my case, I am required to pass a random urine test (with which I have no problem). "
In order to get my paycheck I have to show up to work.
In order to get my paycheck I have to wear a funny hat, silly pants, and weird shoes.
In order to get my paycheck I have to preform a service society deems valuable.
This is going to sound weird at first, but being poor sucks. Can’t we let them have drugs and alcohol to lessen the suffering? If I had to live in squalor I’d want to get high as much as possible too. Maybe if the payments were higher they wouldn’t need drugs.
And if we suddenly cut off money to the drug trade, isn’t that just going to make things worse? All those people will be out of work, leading to an increase in crime.
In other words, when you start off with a poorly thought out solution to a problem you don’t understand, and fail to establish a goal, then it’s hard NOT to provide poorly thought out solutions to the problems you created.
If that doesn’t make sense initially, consider Iraq and Afghanistan. We don’t really know why we went in, or what problem we were trying to solve, or why we were using that tool to solve it. So now we have new problems that we don’t really know how to solve, solution: Troop Surge (ie more money to fix a problem caused by too little money).
Oh, I missed this. Easy answer:
Drug use is an easy enemy to target. It “looks” evil. So it’s easy to demonize the people that do it. Only bad people do drugs, we shouldn’t be providing tax revenue to bad people. Very classic psychology.
Speeding is something we all do, hard to make that look evil. If it isn’t evil it’s hard to get idiots to grab a pitch fork and storm a castle.
The email would work just as well using drunk driving, that’s evil, and easy to demonize.
“Why are we providing welfare to drunk drivers! They’re using our money to put our children as risk!?”
See, first step, demonize your opponent. Second step, something happens. Third step, profit.
I have objections to most drug laws and testing as it is, but I also think this is specifically is wrong.
On a practical level also, getting people on assistance to take a test would be a monumental feat. Those with jobs probably can’t take time off. Those without jobs might not be able to go to a testing facility easily or cheaply. Taking it when originally applying isn’t necessarily better, as some places you can apply via mail and never have to go into the office.
What gets me is that this seems to tie in with the meme that the poor are criminal/slacking/losers/wrong/defective, and that they should be punished for being poor, or being poor should be made utterly unpleasant as an incentive to get those people off their lazy asses to get REAL jobs or whatever… as if anyone would really choose to be genuinely destitute outside of religious vows of poverty (definitely the exception, not the rule).
The person proposing these methods invariably has never been poor him/herself, nor can ever imagine being in that situation. Their Magic Armor protects them from misfortune, be that natural disaster, illness, disability, or whatever.
I agree. What he/she said (My grandmother’s given name was Frank, so I don’t assume gender here :p)
I am in total opposition to random drug testing on the job or otherwise. It is a Constitutional violation in that it is an “unwarranted search and seizure of the person”, even though TECHNICALLY it is NOT such a violation if a private employer does it as opposed to the federal government. WHATEVER! :rolleyes:
I admit to having taken a few piss tests myself for employment, when I was hard up and seeking work in banks and the like, but I am not proud of the fact. :o And I have vowed to NEVER do it again. :mad:
In fact, the whole thing pisses me off so much, I am considering taking up pot smoking (again…last smoked it like 17 yrs ago) just to demonstrate my opposition. (and, ok, yeah, get high) 
It just recently dawned on me that, as a full time college student currently and for the next year or so, I am good to GO as far as drug testing goes…hmmmmmm.
Yes, in much the same way that a DVD player TECHNICALLY isn’t a radio.
The comparison is much closer than that. From a practical standpoint, it doesn’t make much difference who is taking liberties with you; just that it’s happening.
He didn’t say anything about practical standpoints. He said it was a Constitutional violation.
Based on that logic, I’m violating my (hypothetical) minor child’s Constitutional rights if I forbid him to join the Mormon Church.
I’m frequently amazed at the number of people who think that private persons or corporations can violate the Constitution. While they may violate the law, only governments can violate the Constitution. It’s a difficult concept to grasp, I guess.
If a person or a corporation holds slaves, they violate the Constitution. The 13th Amendment and the 18th Amendment both regulate activities by private citizens.