Drug Test

One of the favorite narratives of the right in this country is that welfare recipients are a bunch of shiftless alcoholics and druggies. If you don't win the game in these parts, you are a degenerate loser with a capital L. Never mind that the majority of relief goes to the elderly and dependent children. By all means blame those degenerate stoners.

Unfortunately the facts don't quite line up that way. A few weeks ago South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was forced to recant a soundbite she had been repeating ad nauseam from her bully pulpit, "at least half of the welfare recipients in her state had tested and were shown to be high on drugs." She was pushing for mandatory testing. She said that she had been told that out of hundreds of job applicants at the Savannah River Site, a nuclear reservation owned by the U.S. Energy Department, half had failed a drug test. Jim Giusti, a spokesman for Energy Department, said that in actuality out of the workers hired over the past few years, less than 1 percent had failed a test. Additionally, only new hires -- not applicants -- have to submit to testing in the first place.


"I've never felt like I had to back up what people tell me. You assume that you're given good information," Haley told Jim Davenport of the Associated Press. "And now I'm learning through you guys that I have to be careful before I say something."

Gee, really Nikki? Rather than take responsibility for her scapegoating and slander, Haley chose to dig in. Haley told AP she'd used the anecdote "a million times" to promote drug-testing for the jobless. "It is the reason you're hearing me look into whether we can do drug testing," she said. And while her claims are now known to be bogus and Haley has promised not to repeat it, the governor said she still wants drug tests tied to jobless benefits and a revamped job training program, according to AP.

Haley dug in: "We were on the site. There were multiple people in there. And that comment that they made had a huge impact on me," Haley said. "It is the reason you're hearing me look into whether we can do drug testing. It's the reason you hear me focus so much on job training," Haley said. "Somebody can't say that and it not stick you in the gut." And "now they're all backing off saying it. And they know they said it.," Haley said. "But now they don't have the backup."

Haley is also bumping into her commerce department after more of her falsehoods were uncovered.

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Drug testing for welfare applicants has been mandatory in Florida since July and the results have been quite surprising.

From Carl Hiaasen: After Republican Governor Rick Scott and his GOP majority legislature pushed for the program, angering civil libertarians who see it as contrary to the fourth amendment, The Department of Children and Families reported that since July, when the drug-testing program started, only 2.5 percent of welfare applicants have failed.

By contrast, about 8.9 percent of the general population illegally uses some kind of drug, according to the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.This substantial disparity in favor of the unemployed is not an anomaly. Thirteen years ago, the Florida Legislature funded a pilot drug-testing project targeting poor residents who were receiving temporary cash assistance from the state. Of the nearly 8,800 applicants who got screened for drugs, fewer than 4 percent tested positive.

This little exercise has cost the taxpayers in Florida about 2.7 million dollars. Where is the big investigation? The only people happy are the testing companies. Certainly not the patrician set, who will have to look for some new scapegoats in the sunshine state. Carl Hiaasen has offered to pay to administer the same piss in the cup test to the 170 congressmen in the Florida Legislature. One or two guys have accepted but the wise majority are keeping their mouths shut. Don't hold your breath.

Hiaasen qualified his offer by saying he'd pay for the legislative drug tests only if all lawmakers took them together at the start of the legislative session in January. "That way when the crazy stuff starts to happen a month or two later people won't just automatically assume that they're all stoned," he said. "The reality will set in that these people ... actually don't have any drugs in their system and they're still acting this way."


If you want drug tests, lets take it to the statehouses, the corporate boards, across the board, hell all the way to the Supreme Court. Chief Rehnquist had a prescription pill habit for years and nobody uttered a peep. Serious Jones, you think all those rulings of his are actually legal? He was whacked out of his gourd. Rich or poor, time to belly up to the urinal and see what you've got.