It's Not That Easy

It is our job as Americans, or even generally as humans, to help one another out, but how are we supposed to tell who truly needs help, and who is just trying to play us to get our help when they don’t truly need it? This has been a question that state sponsored welfare programs have been trying to answer for years. One method of determining who deserves to be a part of these welfare programs is through a drug test. Anyone who fails the drug test is not eligible to be a part of welfare. State legislators and their supporters feel that this will help prevent abuse to the system by stopping people from spending welfare money on drugs.

This is a terrible idea. It’s immoral, and has potential to ruin lives. Our country is not meant to judge it’s people, yet some states have no problem denying people money they require based on what substances they have in their system? A person on drugs is still a human, and just like every other human in this world, deserves our help. Just because someone is under the influence of drugs doesn’t mean they don’t need help. They could be a hard working parent who lost their job and (unfortunately) turned to drugs for relief. They have gone done drugs and now want to change to make themselves better. Many times the people doing drugs are the people that need the welfare money most, yet because of a small demographic that spends all their welfare money on drugs, we are preventing people who honestly need money from getting it. Also, consider that there are plenty of ways to easily and legally abuse your welfare money. The country instantly jumps to banning people who have drugs in their system, but doesn’t even think about how much the system gets abused illegally. Someone could just as easily go and spend all their welfare money buying a new TV. In fact, legal abuse of the welfare system is probably worse than drug abuse in the system. Consider this piece from an article about Massachusetts state welfare, “A Team 5 Investigation found more than $2.3 million in Massachusetts welfare money ... has been spent in locations outside the state in a three-month period, including pricey vacation destinations like Hawaii, Las Vegas, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands,” (WCVB Boston). The people that abuse the welfare system can do it easily without breaking the law, so why block a person from a welfare check based on something as superficial as a drug test. Also, consider that if people know they cannot get welfare if they don’t pass a drug test, they will probably just stop doing drugs temporarily to pass the test, then just continue after. People taking the test know this too. Consider how in Florida, out of everyone that was interested in welfare, “7,030 passed, 32 failed and 1,597 did not provide results,” (NY Times). This very clearly shows that not many people are taking the test if they are under the influence of drugs, or if they are under the influence of drugs, they probably are not providing the results.

Implementing a drug test for welfare candidates does not seem to fix the real issue here. What we should have is a more intense screening process. It shouldn’t be easy to obtain welfare. People should be screened in depth and their records should be examined. The state should get to know them and consider every factor possible when making such a life changing decision about someone. Basing welfare checks on any one superficial quality is wrong, and should be stopped. It’s not our job, as humans, to judge one another, and it should be no different for the government or our country.