C_Clayton_Jones
Diamond Member
The new law, a version of which was struck down by a federal court in Michigan in 2003, requires recipients to pay for the [drug] tests before qualifying for benefits and periodically after they receive them.
Other states have studied the issue and decided testing all recipients was not cost effective, the Washington-based Center for Legal and Social Policy said in a study released in January.
During debate about the law, critics pointed to a pilot testing program in Florida that was shut down in 2001 after it showed no significant difference in drug use between welfare recipients and the population at large.
Florida to test all welfare recipients for drugs | Reuters
Not only is the measure un-Constitutional per Marchwinski v. Howard, the case noted in the article struck down by a Federal court, but other states have rejected such programs finding them to be ineffective. In addition, the state of Florida rejected a similar plan ten years ago as having no effect on decreasing drug use.
This measure is merely a punitive effort against those applying for public assistance, predicated on the fallacy that those who apply for assistance are potential drug abusers and criminals and should be presumed guilty accordingly.
From the ruling striking down the similar Michigan law:
[A] review of the scientific literature belies any claim (or stereotype) that welfare-eligible parents are any more likely to engage in drug-induced incidents of child abuse or neglect than more affluent families, or that the state is in any way justified in diminishing the constitutional rights of poor people in order to address either their substance and/or child abuse.
Michigans tenuous justification for its welfare drug testing policy that
combating substance abuse improves family ties and employment opportunities together with its negligible evidence of a specific crisis of drug abuse afflicting the welfare sector resembles the highly general argument recently rejected by the Supreme Court that searching vehicles absent individualized suspicion of illegal activity in the name of drug interdiction was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Edmond, 121 S.Ct. 447. It simply cannot be said that Michigans policy of drug testing its welfare population fitwithin the closely guarded category of constitutionally permissible suspicionless searches. Chandler, 520 U.S. at 309.
http://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/marchwinskiamicusbrief1_22_01.pdf