Drug Test Welfare Recpients?

The question was posed to me on one of the Facebook polls this morning: "Should you have to take a drug test for welfare?"

An initial emotional response can easily be "yes". If the government is going to assist individuals surely we have the right to know that they are drug free, that our tax dollars are not being used to support bad behavior. This type of policy would work to reduce the welfare rolls and our subsequent wasted tax dollars. Ideally it would force welfare moms to clean up their act.

Or, just maybe, this type of policy would increase the misery of a population that is obviously struggling to meet the day to day sustenance requirements of life. Perhaps this would result in the perpetuation through the generations of this poverty and helplessness as the children in these households also suffer the consequences of their parents' bad decisions.

Of course, if drug testing was used as an intervention tool, one that led to treatment for the drug problem, that would be entirely different, and from my view positive. As a society we need to move away from the punitive nature of drug policy, toward one based on the recognition that it is a medical issue. There is a plethora of medical research that lends support to this argument and we need to work to have the scientific evidence hold sway over the propaganda from the absolutely failed policies of the "war on drugs".

In the end a recognition of the drug problem as a medical issue will save thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans from a life of misery on the fringes of society, from leaving families and children in their destructive wakes, and reduce our prison populations and the increasing percentage of tax dollars going to run those prisons. This seems like a left/right win-win if I ever saw one.

What do you think?