The Real Test Behind the New Piss Test

Yay, let's pick on the poor! A WV delegate has introduced a bill that is causing quite a bit of controversy in this state.  It reveals, in my opinion, the fundamental divide in how people tend to look at those who receive public money.  Heres' the link to the article cited below:

Forbes article

The bill calls for random drug tests to be undertaken by the Division of Human Services. If a person fails, they'll be given a second test in 30 to 60 days. If they fail again, they'll lose their public assistance.

It's intended for anyone receiving benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, unemployment compensation or "welfare," which could refer to the Temporary Aid to Needy Families program, the Women, Infants and Children program, or both.

Regardless, that's a substantial slice of the state's population, with roughly 288,000 West Virginians receiving food stamps alone, according to the latest federal figures. With estimates cited by Blair that drug tests cost from $50 to $150 a pop, the bill could be pricey, depending how many random tests are administered each month.

Blair is following up one of the typical beliefs about people who take public assistance--that they're all lazy and drug addicted.  His bill represents the idea that if we could just "catch them in the act", we'd move all those lazy people off the dole and force them into employment.  There are a number of problems with this line of thinking, but I don't have to tell Blair that.  His own party isn't too happy about it and has publicly said so.

There's also the fact that the stiffest criticism of the idea so far has come from one of Blair's fellow Republicans: Randolph County Sen. Clark Barnes.

Barnes once collected unemployment compensation and food stamps after losing a job in the 1970s, and said, "I can't imagine having to suffer the insult of taking a drug test in addition to that."

He says Blair's proposal is contrary to the party's stance on Constitutional rights and civil liberties.

"As Republicans, we always complain about regulation, regulation, regulation," Barnes said. "But some of our leading Republicans, when it's politically profitable, want to create more regulations and more government."

Blair, who got the idea for the bill after hearing that five children were recently born in an Eastern Panhandle hospital with drug addictions, disagrees. He's confident his bill won't meet the same fate as a similar Michigan law, which was struck down by a court in 2003.

"We're not trying to hurt people, we're trying to help them get off drugs and get back to work," Blair said. "There are people who go out and sell their blood for money, do all kinds of things for money. Who out there wouldn't be happy to pee in a cup for a $300-a-week check?"

Who, indeed?  One of the arguments for this bill is that regular employees are often drug tested randomly as well, as a condition of employment.  Why shouldn't this apply to people getting benefits from the state?  On the face of it, that softens the punch somewhat.  But you first have to overlook the problems with drug testing at work in order to apply it to this new set of people.  Some employers have a legitimate reason to drug test; some jobs require you to maintain a certain level of awareness, or lives could be endangered.  Some employers drug test just to be shits about it.  Even pretending for a minute that people smoke pot, for example, before they go into work (which doesn't tend to be the case for regular pot users), coming to work fully buzzed and running Microsoft Excel hurts no one.  Someone who smokes pot once every six weeks or so, the amount of time THC usually stays in your pee, and then goes on to answer the switchboards is probably not a danger to his job or the rest of the people working there or calling in.  Most people are recreational users of pot.  You don't normally bust a heroin addict with a piss cup test.  They usually self-defeat their employment in other ways before they even make it to the piss cup test.  Most drug testing is a major infringement of personal privacy, with no proven economic and employment benefits, and that is because they are usually only looking for pot.  Turning up other harder drugs is very rare.  They would do better to test people for being alcoholics--that has a far greater impact on the job than pot does.  but I digress.  

But part of the outrage of this bill besides the invasion of privacy, the sketchiness of the advantages and the costs is the inherent unfairness that lies at the heart of it.  When we think about who gets public money, we tend to falsely think of only one group of people.  I think Delegate Susman cut to the chase in a recent interview on the bill:

article link

Susman called the Blair proposal “not only an outrage” but impractical to boot.

“Why not demand the same thing for white-collar criminals — corporate executives who have profited from recent congressional largess, movie stars who make obscene amounts of money for marginal work, those who enjoy a large tax refund each year or members of the Legislature?” she asked.

Wouldn't we stand to gain more by making sure the biggest consumers of public money were also not coke heads and thus undeserving of the public dole?  How about we start with AIG execs (or their equivalent in West Virginia), and see how happy they are to take the piss cup test.  We should certainly apply that here in West Virginia to the construction companies that benefit from state money--every single one of their workers should pass the piss cup test or have the funds revoked.  Then we'll move on to retirees and public school teachers (including the new President of WVU, who I'm sure, would agree that there is nothing undignified about being asked to take a piss test) and see how they feel about it.  I'm sure they'd all be grateful, too.  

Blair has, of course, provided no projected numbers for his proposal that would demonstrate success.  He has also not explained how once we find drug addicted people and kick them off welfare how this would help people get off drugs and get back to work.  Logically, doesn't that mean they need to use their medical card to go to rehab and that they need to use gov't programs to get their education and job skills up to par?  If this is truly about helping people kick the habit and get back to work, and not just about picking on the poor because they're an easy target and it's politically palatable with some voters, the bill does not provide any explanation of what is to happen to help people do that after they are caught.  Blair is merely working off the suspicion that there will be a substantial enough amount of people who will be caught in the act to justify the cost of the testing.  Or, he doesn't care and just wants the political points.

Let's say for a minute that he is right to be suspicious.  I am, after all, not suggesting that there are NO people who are on welfare who take drugs, just that the number of people he's after is a small pool.  Let's say that there are people taking drugs who are on unemployment.  I hate to break it to Delegate Blair, but there are plenty of people who take drugs and maintain employment just fine.  Drugs are not a barrier to employment, unless you're looking for crack fiends.  Testing for drugs will turn up marijuana, at best, and then for only a few people, maybe, and then you won't be catching the serial abusers, who have long since learned how to manipulate the "pee in the cup" test.  And how much will he have spent at this point to catch them?  And how much more is he planning on spending to rehab them and retrain them?  

What Blair needs to understand is that the barrier to employment in West Virginia is not drugs.  It's illiteracy.  We have one of the most uneducated workforces in the country.  We also have very few jobs here for people to go into--the town I live in is booming, but that's not true for the rest of the state; we're a university town and a satellite town of Pittsburgh.  We're an anomaly.  I'm not sure where he thinks the rest of the people who live here are going to go to work once they're caught.  Blair would do better to focus on providing educational rehabilitation and to make WV attractive to businesses who want to come to our many small towns and offer jobs.  

Start working on making West Virginia less available to people who want to rape its natural resources at the expense of the people who live here.  Quit picking on the poor.  This "test" is nothing more than a test about people's preconceived notions.

-- DV