February 29, 2012__________________
Portland Observer B lack H is to ry M o n th
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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. And that,
we can all agree, is a waste of our tax dollars.
David Elliot is communications director fo r
USAction.
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