Arizona Spent Over $1.7 Million Drug Testing Welfare Recipients to Catch 1 Person in 3 years

August 12, 2015 // 3 Comments »

Somehow in America if you are poor and in need of food, you better not take drugs, or no public assistance for you! You deserve to die of hunger because you spend your money on ‘da dope.

Just don’t die in the street where we have to step over your body on the way to the nail salon.

Oh, and by the way, this is a wholly made up problem created by frightened politicians. According to a study by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, differences between the proportion of welfare and non-welfare recipients using illegal drugs are statistically insignificant.


But that did not stop Arizona.

Arizona proudly claims it spent $1.7 million dollars to test 87,000 people on public assistance for drug use. The total number of drug cheats caught in the first three years of the program, 2009-2012, was exactly one — a single positive result, which saved the state precisely $560, minus the $42 cost of the drug test itself. But oh my, since 2012, they got two more of the danged varmints.

Luckily, the Arizona drug testing is being done in a scientific way. The state asks new welfare recipients whether they’ve used drugs in the past 30 days, and only those who answer yes are tested.

Now the goody-goodest news of all is that Arizona apparently has got them some cheap drug testing. The ACLU estimates that an average drug test costs $42, bringing the total cost as high as $3.65 million if all of the Arizona welfare recipients were subjected to the full-price tests. But who knows,maybe there was GroupOn.

And luckily the money being spent on these drug tests is not going to feed hungry people, so it’s not being wasted on American who are wasted.


It is not just Arizona who wastes taxpayer money to solve a non-problem. Have a look:


Missouri
Applicants for benefits that required drug screening, March 2013–September 2014: 69,587
Total required to take follow-up drug test at additional cost: 1,646
Disqualified due to a positive drug test: 69

Utah
Applicants for benefits that required drug screening, August 2012–July 2014: 9,253
Total required to take follow-up drug test at additional cost: 1,878
Disqualified due to a positive drug test: 29

Tennessee
Applicants for benefits that required drug screening, July 2014–December 2014: 11,300
Total required to take follow-up drug test at additional cost: 273
Disqualified due to a positive drug test: 24

Florida
Applicants for benefits that required drug screening, July 2014–December 2014: 4,044
Total required to take follow-up drug test: Unknown
Disqualified due to a positive drug test: 108

The neat thing is that Florida used to (they were stopped by court order) requires welfare applicants, who have little money hence the application, to pay for their own drug tests up front. If they passed the test, they eventually had their money refunded.

Note that if you can afford your own food, take all the drugs you want. Smoke up, Arizonians, and order that pizza delivered when you get the munchies. Damn hippies.

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Posted in Economy, Minimum Wage