The Michigan State House recently passed a measure that would require some would-be welfare recipients to pass a drug test before receiving benefits. It is expected to pass the State Senate and make its way to the governor's desk, where it would likely be signed into law by Gov. Rick Synder. Michigan, of course, isn't the only state currently debating such legislation. Indeed, it isn't even the first time Michigan has tried this.
In 1999, Michigan was the first state to actually implement a pilot program to drug test TANF applicants (other states concluded that such a policy was too costly to enforce at the time, for various reasons). The pilot was short-lived, as the American Civil Liberties Union soon filed suit and ultimately won the case in 2003, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit deemed the policy to be unconstitutional under the 4th Amendment's protection against "unreasonable searches."
In that case, Marchwinski v. Howard, U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Roberts concluded that:
"...Michigan's requirement that welfare recipients be drug tested does not fit within the closely guarded category of constitutionally permissible suspicionless testing. Drug testing under these circumstances must satisfy a special need, and that need must concern public safety. In this instance, there is no indication of a concrete danger to public safety which demands departure from the Fourth Amendment's main rule and normal requirement of individualized suspicion."
In short, the law requiring drug testing didn't meet a special need (in this case, "public safety") that trumped the 4th Amendment. In an effort to get around the rather large "unconstitutional" problem, Michigan State legislators are designing the law to make the drug tests suspicion-based, as opposed to suspicionless, which was specifically ruled unconstitutional. Suspicion-based testing means that the caseworker would only request a drug test if s/he had some reason to believe that the applicant was using illegal substances. Whether suspicion-based testing is any less unconstitutional than suspicionless testing is an open question at this point, and will likely be hammered out by the courts in the coming years. To my mind, however, the more important point was buried deeper in Robert's opinion:
"If the State is allowed to drug test FIP recipients in order to ameliorate child abuse and neglect by virtue of its financial assistance on behalf of minor children, that excuse could be used for testing the parents of all children who receive Medicaid, State Emergency Relief, educational grants or loans, public education or any other benefit from the State. In all cases in which the State offers a benefit on behalf of minor children, the State could claim that it has a broad interest in the care of those children which overcomes the privacy rights of the parents."
TANF & SNAP recipients are easy to beat up on because one can draw a direct line between them and the direct transfer payments they receive from the government. Yet these programs are fundamentally no different than the countless other services provided by local, state, and federal governments - some of which are utilized by us every waking day of our lives. The roads we drive on, the clean tap water we drink, the building codes that prevent our apartment complexes from collapsing on us, and, of course, the public schools we and our children attend (even private schools must meet certain educational standards mandated by their respective states).
There's a powerful argument to be made that the most generous government benefits are, actually, directed towards the middle class and the wealthy. The home mortgage interest deduction is a popular example. It may not be an explicit transfer payment to homeowners, but it certainly creates a windfall for the real estate industry, and the resulting loss of tax revenue ($70 - $100 billion) creates a budget hole that rivals, and perhaps even exceeds annual spending on SNAP ($80 billion).
Getting back to education, Federal Stafford Loans are taken out by college students with lower interest rates attached than those offered by private lenders. As such, the lower monthly student loan payments, paid back by the borrower upon graduation, can be accurately described as another federal benefit. I myself intend to take advantage of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, in which the remainder of my student loans will be forgiven after 10 years of employment in the public sector. The prospect of having some of my student loans forgiven is an enormous benefit that I and many other college graduates will undoubtedly utilize, amounting to thousands and thousands of dollars that the federal government is giving to students with the understanding that it will never be paid back. Given the cost of attending college these days, it's easy to see how the monetary amount of the loan forgiven for a typical college student could easily engulf the monetary amount given to a typical welfare recipient over his/her lifetime.
Then there are the benefits directed primarily towards the wealthy. This is getting away from the topic at hand, though, so I'll briefly list a few. Or rather, I'll quote economist Dean Baker's "The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive," which is a much more comprehensive analysis of said benefits. They include: bailouts for "too-big-to-fail" bankers, patent and copyright protections (Baker asserts that, in the absence of government enforced patent monopolies, Americans would only spend $30 billion annually on prescription drugs, as opposed to the $300 billion we actually spend, which amounts to an enormous $270 billion windfall for the executives of the pharmaceutical world), and corporate liability limitations (laws which protect executives and shareholder's personal assets in the event of a bankruptcy).
These are nice things. I'm not arguing that all of these benefits should end or be reduced. The broader point is that it's hypocritical to just drug test TANF and/or SNAP recipients when, at the end of the day, we're all welfare recipients, benefiting at the expense of the taxpayer.
Putting aside concerns over constitutionality and hypocrisy, there is, perhaps, a more important reason as to why drug testing for welfare is a terrible idea: it winds up costing more money than it saves. That was the case, at least, with Florida.
Florida was the most recent state to actually implement testing for TANF recipients before the program was shut down in late 2011, due to another ACLU lawsuit. The data that has since been released is illuminating:
"Of the 4,086 applicants who scheduled drug tests while the law was enforced, 108 people, or 2.6 percent, failed, most often testing positive for marijuana. About 40 people scheduled tests but canceled them, according to the Department of Children and Families, which oversees Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, known as the TANF program.
The numbers, confirming previous estimates, show that taxpayers spent $118,140 to reimburse people for drug test costs, at an average of $35 per screening.
The state’s net loss? $45,780.
"That’s not counting attorneys and court fees and the thousands of hours of staff time it took to implement this policy," Newton said."
Since Michigan's law is designed just like Florida's, in the sense that the state will pick up the costs of the drug test if the applicant tests negative for use, it's likely we would suffer a net loss as well. The only real winners here are the companies that get contracted for the testing, which are, unsurprisingly, big cheerleaders for drug testing legislation. Gov. Rick Scott of Florida had financial ties to one such company, Solantic, meaning that drug testing would have been good for his bottom line, if not for the bottom line of the state he governs.
The miniscule 2.6 percent failure rate shouldn't come as any surprise either. Various surveys have found that welfare recipients use illicit substances at similar or lower rates than that of the general population. Common sense dictates that a poor parent on TANF has less discretionary income to blow on drugs than an affluent college student playing with Mommy & Daddy's money.
But maybe that wouldn't be common sense to the conservative who naturally assumes that welfare recipients are using our hard earned money for nefarious purposes. After all, poor people "abusing the system" (whatever the hell that means) is the rule, not the exception. It doesn't matter that empirical evidence leads to the exact opposite conclusion, because conservatives are not operating on logical reasoning in this matter. Rather, they are operating out of spite.
Drug testing for welfare is bad fiscal policy. It has been ruled unconstitutional, and it's hypocritical to single out welfare recipients when we all benefit from government largesse. It may seem like a reasonable policy on it's face, but the costs objectively outweigh any benefits. Many of those who are in favor of drug testing welfare applicants point out that we sometimes have to take a drug test before starting a new job. As to that complaint, I would submit that such drug tests are just as equally invasive and unnecessary (so long as public safety isn't an issue), and "well, we have to do it too" is not a sound basis for implementing good policy.
Actually, to simplify it even further, weed really shouldn't be illegal in the first place.
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