Drug Testing the Unemployed

[Lemur]

Apparently there is a push in Congress to drug-test the unemployed. While I get the concept and why it's attractive to a certain mindset, I don't see the connection to reality.

The biggest druggies I have ever known were all well-employed and swimming in disposable income. This makes sense. Drugs cost money. They are a luxury item.

Moreover, a smaller-scale version of this law, which was passed in Florida, yielded a 2% positive drug test result in welfare recipients. This makes sense. Drugs cost money. They are a luxury item.

Thoughts?

[johnhughthom]

The majority of unemployed drug addicts may well be funding their addiction through crime, rather than welfare.

[Lemur]

Actually, the numbers support my contention that drugs, being a luxury item, are less-prominent among the unemployed.

According to The National Survey on Drug Use and Health's 2010 data: "22.6 million Americans 12 or older (8.9-percent of the population) were current illicit drug users."

So we have an estimated illicit drug use among the general population of ~9%. But when actual testing of welfare recipients was performed in Florida, ~2% tested positive. Even if we assume that there was rampant cheating on the drug tests, and double that figure, we still have a 4% positive rate among Florida welfare recipients. In other words, even under unfavorable assumptions, the illegal drug usage rate among the unemployed appears to be ½ of the national rate.

So. Drug tests are not free. Administering them is not free. Testing any significant percentage of unemployed people would be hugely expensive. I question the wisdom of mandating this when the best evidence is that people who are broke are less likely to do illegal drugs.

-edit-

Apparently part of the rationale for the Florida law was cost savings, i.e. we won't pay welfare to druggies, so the tests will save the state budget. Epic fail, reports The Economist:

The state expects between 1,000 and 1,500 people to take the test each month, at a cost of $30 per test—a cost borne by the state for applicants who pass. At the current rate of failure, the state will save a grand total of $40,800 to $98,400 out of a welfare program that will cost an estimated $178m this year. [...]

Whatever the reason, the promised savings have not appeared. But perhaps saving money was never really the point of the program. [...] perhaps the point of the drug-testing program was for Florida's government to signal its disapproval of poor people using drugs, and if it took a massive government intrusion into people's lives, establishing a precedent for suspicionless drug testing on an entire class of people, and paying to defend themselves against lawsuits filed by civil-liberties groups to do that, so be it.

[phonicsmonkey]

What is the point? So you find someone who is a drug user. Do you cut their benefits? What purpose would it serve? Sounds like populist nonsense to me.

[rory_20_uk]

Rampant cheating wouldn't be to double the number. More like times it by 10.

The law sounds pointless in any case. More soundbyte politics.

[Lemur]

Rampant cheating wouldn't be to double the number. More like times it by 10.

Why not multiply it by 100? A thousand? Why not declare that every person who is unemployed is also on PCP?

Doubling a number for a bad-case scenario seems reasonable to me. Going much beyond that would require some data to support the assertion.

And yes, the law seems to consist entirely of posturing for effect. No actual result is wanted or intended.

[rvg]

While a case can be made that this testing is a waste of taxpayers' money, there is nothing wrong with drug tests from a legal perspective. If Floridians want this done then who am I to tell them otherwise? I definitely do not buy the argument about this procedure somehow being discriminatory.