Editorial, Opinion

EDITORIAL: North Carolina’s welfare drug tests condemn poor

North Carolina released results of a 2013 law that requires welfare applicants to undergo self-funded drug tests. Of the 7,600 applicants, 89 were referred to drug testing and 21 tested positive, the Miami Herald reported Wednesday.

Social workers interviewed welfare applicants to determine which ones needed to undergo drug tests, which are also required from applicants who have been convicted of drug felonies in the past three years.

Those who test positive have their benefits cut off. Twelve of the 21 positive tests qualified for “reduced payment” because children were involved, according to The Charlotte Observer.

Thirteen states including North Carolina currently have welfare drug testing in place.

The worst part of this is that applicants have to pay for the drug testing out of their own pockets. It’s ridiculous to expect people looking for government assistance to pay $55 for a drug test that they might test negative for. North Carolina’s government shouldn’t be making people pay to get out of a hole they already can’t find a way out of.

If the government had to pay for applicants’ drug tests, however, it would add up to a lot of government money being spent to make sure people don’t frivolously spend government money. This seems entirely counter-productive.

The main issue with drug-using welfare applicants is that they use taxpayer money to help fund their addictions. In its most simplified form, tax money is being used to buy drugs. That shouldn’t happen, especially when that money is supposed to be used to help people stay alive.

But requiring drug testing won’t miraculously cause all welfare applicants to sober up. Addiction doesn’t work like that. There’s a reason why people spend money on drugs before food. Maybe it would become an accepted norm that drug users can’t get welfare years down the line, but for those who need welfare immediately, it would be disastrous.

Taking welfare away from drug users will just make matters worse. If the government won’t give them money, they’ll obtain it another, possibly less legal, way or die. Neither of those options should even be considered in modern society.

There should even be a fallback for those who test positive for drugs. Drug users are people too. They have families they need to support. They don’t deserve to die just because they’ve made a sizeable mistake in life.

One pricey alternative to a total cutoff of welfare funding is to give drug-using welfare applicants a delayed cutoff. If applicants use drugs, they should be allotted a reasonable amount of time to get clean. The government would ideally provide applicants with resources to facilitate this. At the end of the grace period, their welfare would run out if applicants were still using drugs. This sounds great in theory, but putting it into practice could be another story entirely.

But requiring welfare applicants to undergo drug tests perpetuates the myth that drug use is a lower-class phenomenon. Some people who use welfare have never touched a drug in their lives. To those people, it’s degrading and offensive to have pee in a cup for something they know they are innocent of. The 61 North Carolinian welfare applicants who had to take a drug test and pay for it wasted their money on something they knew was pointless. There’s no fairness in that.

This opens up a wider discussion that needs to be had about the stigma between drug use and lower classes. Low-paying jobs require employees to undergo drug tests, but higher-paying jobs don’t. You just have to look at any suburban high school to see that many upper-middle-class white teens do drugs at a rate rock stars can’t keep up with.

Placing restrictions on welfare is easy because it isn’t a gift. It’s a drug in itself. But people shouldn’t have to pay to just survive at the bare minimum of life.

One Comment

  1. If you do the math again, 21 of 89 were positive, that’s 24%. Not all 7600 were tested.