Should Welfare Recipients Be Tested for Drugs? >
Say No to Drug Testing the Unemployed
Drug testing perpetuates myths and scapegoats the unemployed
December 15, 2011
About Christine L. Owens:
Christine Owens is the executive director of the National Employment Law Project, where she leads a team of 30 lawyers, policy analysts, and workforce specialists in cutting-edge research, education, and advocacy for low-wage, unemployed, immigrant, and other disadvantaged workers.
The idea of routinely drug testing applicants for unemployment insurance is mean-spirited and misguided. Unemployment insurance is a program explicitly grounded in individuals' work history, involuntary job loss, and willingness to work—individuals' "work" underwrites the "insurance" that provides income replacement during unemployment. In normal times, unemployment spells are typically only a few months, but everyone knows these are not normal times. Extreme unemployment, though, is no reason to impose extreme conditions on law-abiding Americans seeking the unemployment insurance assistance they've earned.
Drug testing of unemployment insurance applicants is terrible policy for other reasons too.
[Control of U.S. Senate Up For Grabs in 2012.]
First, it's unnecessary. People who lose their jobs because of drug use or failed drug tests are ineligible for unemployment insurance in 20 states already. In the remaining 30 states, a drug-related discharge would likely be treated as disqualifying misconduct.
Second, it perpetuates myths and scapegoats the unemployed. Drug-testing proposals stem from false assumptions that the unemployed are lazy drug users who prefer unemployment checks to paychecks. Aside from being wrong, this assumption completely misunderstands what unemployment insurance does: It assists workers who've lost their jobs involuntarily, generally for economic reasons. Economic reasons also explain why so many of today's unemployed workers haven't found new jobs: There simply aren't enough to replace those we've lost. For nearly three years now, unemployed workers have outnumbered job openings by more than 4 to 1.
Third, massive drug testing is the last thing cash-strapped states can afford. A conservative estimate by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration puts the cost of drug testing at $25 to $75 per test. Because federal law prohibits charging applicants, states would have to absorb the cost of testing thousands of unemployed workers. The Texas Legislative Budget Board recently estimated the full-year cost of implementing such a program to be nearly $30 million. Is there a more frivolous or unnecessary way to spend taxpayer money?
[Mort Zuckerman: 5 Sure-Fire Ways to Create More Jobs.]
Florida's recent experience with drug testing TANF recipients shows the cost of such testing would likely outweigh any perceived benefits. The testing, which has been halted by a federal court on constitutional grounds, found positive results in only 2.5 percent of applicants, substantially below the Centers for Disease Control's 8.5 percent estimate of the drug-use rate in the general population.
Proposals to drug test the unemployed are insensitive to the realities of today's economy, ignorant of the implications of such policies, and insulting to millions of law-abiding Americans who already bear the heaviest burdens of a weak economy.
- Neither Left Nor Right Have Answer to Economic Conundrum.
- U.S. News & World Report Debate Club: Should Congress Extend Federal Unemployment Benefits?
- GOP: Drug Tests for Unemployment Applicants.
- Other Arguments
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#11008214
Yes — We ought to provide aid on the basis of reciprocal obligation
ROBERT RECTOR, Senior Research Fellow in Domestic Policy at the Heritage Foundation
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#2716195
Yes — Why pay someone not to work when he has voluntarily taken himself out of the hiring pool?
JACK KINGSTON, U.S. Representative, Georgia's 1st District
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#3612173
Yes — We are overdue to renew welfare reform efforts and make additional gains
DAVID VITTER, U.S. Senator, Louisiana
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#4450253
Yes — Require drug testing only of welfare applicants with a history of substance abuse
LAWRENCE M. MEAD, Professor of Politics and Public Policy at New York University and Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
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#5411678
No — Drug testing welfare recipients is an intrusion into private lives not consistent with U.S. values
PETER CAPPELLI, George W. Taylor Professor of Management at the Wharton School and Director of Wharton's Center for Human Resources
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#6239603
No — Welfare recipients are no more likely to have drug problems than anyone else
MATTHEW BODIE, Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at Saint Louis University School of Law
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#7276646
No — The assumption that people on public assistance use drugs at a higher rate than the general population is erroneous
VANITA GUPTA, Deputy Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union
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#8233613
No — Suggesting welfare recipients are worthy of suspicion unfairly singles the group out for disdain
JOY MOSES, Senior Policy Analyst with the Poverty and Prosperity Program at the Center for American Progress
