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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 29, 2012)
February 29, 2012__________________ Portland Observer B lack H is to ry M o n th Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views of the Portland Observer. We welcome reader essays, photos and story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com. Page 7 O pinion i i _______________________ New Prices Effective May 1,2010 Martin Cleaning Service Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning Residential & Commercial Services Minimum Service CHG. $45.00 A small distance/travel charge may be applied CARPET CLEANING 2 Cleaning Areas or more $30.00 Each Area Pre-Spray Traffic Areas (Includes: 1 sm all H allw ay) 1 Cleaning Area (only) $40.00 Includes Pre-Spray Traffic Area (Hallway Extra) Stairs (12-16 sta irs - With O th e r S ervices): An Attack on Unemployment Insurance The hidden motives to drug testing the jobless by D avid E lliot It's all the rage in state legisla tures and even in Congress. More than a dozen states are debating p ro p o sals to require jo b le ss Americans who receive unemployment benefits to submit to mandatory drug testing. The argument for forcing the unemployed to relieve themselves in a cup goes something like this: Tax dollars shouldn't support drug addicts, and neither federal nor state governments should be in the business of funding drug cartels. Never mind that sober-minded think tanks, serious policy shops, and even the nation's leading newspapers have debunked the notion that unemployed workers are likely to be drug users, and that mandatory drug testing consti tutes sound public policy. It took Jon Stewart's Daily Show to expose the hypocrisy of drug- testing proponents. Stewart dispatched faux reporter Aasif Mandvi to Florida to interview Navy veteran Louis Lebron, an unemployed worker who is relying on his ben efits to take care of his disabled mom while he studies to be an accountant. "I refuse to take the drug test," Lebron sol emnly tells Aasif. "This is unconstitutional. It violates the Fourth Amendment. I served in the U.S. Navy. I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. It's casting a cloud over a population of people with no factual evidence." He's right. Advocates for unemployed workers suspect that conservatives who would require unemployment recipients to sub mit to mandatory drug testing have a hidden motive: First, undermine public support for unem ployment insurance by associating recipients with drug users. Then, get the public to think about unemployment insurance as just a gov ernment handout. Finally, blame the unemployed for their predicament, thus creating a political environment that allows benefits to be slashed. An example of this thinking comes from Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who told CNN, "The studies show that people on welfare are using drugs (at rates) much higher than the (general) popula tion." Wrong. Before a federal judge struck down Florida's drug testing program as unconstitu tional, just two percent of unemployment recipi ents there failed a drug test. Much lower than the estimated 8-to-9 percent of the U.S. population that uses illegal drugs on a regular basis. In Indiana, 1,240 people were tested, and of those, just 13 people, or about 1 percent of the sample, tested positive. Even if drug testing were to root out a signifi cant sample of unemployment insurance recipi ents, and even if one could overlook the moral and constitutional implications, there's another problem: Cost. Depending on which test is used, drug test ing costs $25 to $75 per test. Indiana's drug testing program cost $45,000 and involved 1,240 people, and yielded 13 people who tested posi tive, according to the National Law Employment Project. That's «n average of $3,500 for every positive test result, or more money than it would cost to extend federal unemployment insurance benefits for one person through 2012. More broadly, an advisory board in Texas found it would cost that state $30 million to implement a comprehensive testing program for jobless Texans, which is why a drug-testing proposal failed to pass even the rabidly conser vative Texas House of Representatives. Will lawmakers in Congress and the state legislatures come to their senses? Perhaps, but it might take some comic relief to help them do so. Already, with tongues planted firmly in cheek, Democratic lawmakers in four states— Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and Tennessee — have pro posed making Republican legislators pee in cups. And a bipartisan group of legislators in a fifth state, Indiana, actually passed a bill calling for random drug testing of their colleagues. If some lawmakers tested positive, we could call it Legislating under the Influence. 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