The Results of the Proposal is Negative

          In a chaotic state the nation’s economy is in, people are exceedingly concerned about what their tax dollars are paying for. A large amount of tax money goes to the US welfare system, designed to give financial aid to families and people in desperate need of assistance. With the large impact the welfare system has on impoverished families and tax payers, the proposition to enforce drug tests on welfare recipients has been controversial. I disagree with the suggestion to require drug tests of welfare recipients due to the high cost of the proposal, and the relatively low amount of recipients using drugs.

          With the huge economic debt, and ever increasing need to cut back on spending, the last thing that states and federal government need is another useless program or regulation to squander money on. However some people managed to have found just that with the idea to require drug tests from welfare recipients. According to the article “States Adding Drug Test as Hurdle for Welfare” the drug tests the states pay for “costs up to $40, and the state will reimburse those who pass” (Sulzberger). When taking into consideration that in Florida “7,030 passed, 32 failed, and 1597 did not provide results” (Sulzberger) the drug tests, which would mean that just the state of Florida alone, could end up paying $280,000 for reimbursements to the participants who passed. And if the entire country took up this proposal, then millions of dollars would solely be wasted to the drug tests. To use these millions of dollars for the drug tests of the welfare system, rather than utilizing them for the welfare system itself is a preposterous idea. The high cost of the drug tests would not be so ridiculous, if it wasn’t for the uselessness of them due to the low amount of drug users among welfare recipients

          .  According to the report “Illegal Drug Use” by the Center for Disease Control, the percentage of people over 12 years or  older “with any illicit drug use in the past month: 8.7%”(CDC). When taking into consideration that “unemployed adults are about twice as likely” (Sulzberger) to use drugs compared to employed adults, we can conclude that around 17% of unemployed adults use drugs. However when looking at the welfare recipient drug test results of Florida that were provided, less than one percent of the recipients used drugs. However there were 1,597 results that weren't provided. Even if assuming that half of the non provided recipients failed their drug tests, which is probably larger than reality, than around 10% of the recipients used drugs. With this we can see that the large majority of people who receive welfare don’t use it for drugs, but rather use it to support families.

The argument that drug tests would save welfare dollars by preventing recipients from spending the money on drugs is completely nullified by the fact that the drug tests themselves would be at a much higher expense. Due to the high cost of the drug test, and low amount of drug users among recipients, we can conclude that these drug tests are a huge misapplication of valuable taxpayer dollars, and a waste of time.