Drug Tests for Welfare Recipients? By 2013,13 of the 30 state legislatures had passed laws requiring a urine sample for people receiving welfare, unemployment assistance, job training, food stamps, or public housing.
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job training are all intended to provide a transition to employment, these policies make sense. However, one opponent was quoted as saying, All this does is perpetuate the stereotype that low-income people are lazy, shiftless drug addicts and if all they did was pick themselves up by the bootstraps then the country wouldn’t be in the mess it’s in.” Quoted in A.G Sulzberger States Adding Drug Test as Hurdle for Welfare, Newyork times
What do you think? Is this a reasonable type of policy to impose during a time of high government expenditures? Is it unreasonable, particularly in a time of high unemployment?
Imagine a specific example of a single mother with two young children. Previously employed at a low-paying job, she is receiving unemployment pay-ments while attending a community college, and she also has been receiving food stamps.
If she smokes marijuana and fails the urine test, should this assis-tance be stopped?
