Essay On Welfare Drug Testing

The Downside of Drug Testing Welfare Recipients To continue receiving benefits, should welfare recipients be drug tested? This is the controversial question that continues to go around the world. Many people believe that drug testing welfare recipients is unnecessary. People believe that drug testing recipients would waste taxpayer’s money, stop people from asking for government help, and go against people’s constitutional rights. There are many reasons why people oppose drug testing welfare recipients. One of those reasons being, drug testing welfare recipients could waste taxpayer’s money. The government would use tax money to administer drug test (Cunha, par. 3). Many taxpayers do not feel like they are obligated to pay for a person’s drug habit (“Editorial: Drug Testing Welfare Recipients Doesn’t Add Up,” par. 1). In Tennessee, only one person to the 800 who applied for government assistance tested positive for drugs. In Florida, during four months of drug testing , only 2.6 % of welfare recipients tested positive, which was under Florida’s illegal use of 8%, which meant that fewer people using government assistance used drugs. The money spent cost taxpayer’s more money than they originally thought they could have saved (Cunha,

In 2000, a judge from Michigan ruled that drug testing welfare recipients had violated the recipients privacy rights (“Federal Appeals Court Upholds Ban on Testing Welfare Recipients for Drugs,” p. 1). The drug testing method also goes against the Fourth Amendment right to be free of search and seizures by the government without probable cause. People feel that the poor should not have to choose between providing for their family and give up their rights (“Federal Appeals Court Upholds Ban on Testing Welfare Recipients for Drugs,” p. 4). As a result, some states choose not to require drug test, because they feel it is