Point-Counterpoint: Welfare drug testing

  Point:

    A longstanding controversy in the United States that has recently risen as a hot topic in states like Florida, where the new law was recently signed, is the question of whether or not welfare recipients should be subject to drug testing in order to ensure that they are fitting to receive taxpayer money. 

   If this law were to expand to California, it would surely affect California's large percent of welfare recipients.  According to the Census Bureau, California represents 12 percent of the U.S. population, but represents 32 percent of all welfare cases nationwide. 

   Because California represents such a large percentage of welfare cases in the U.S., the possibility of this laws proposal in California could have a far greater impact.

   The opposition to this proposal believes that this idea will only limit welfare for people in need, violate welfare recipients' Fourth Amendment rights, and keep a longstanding stigma on those who collect welfare. 

   However, drug testing for welfare recipients in no way violates any rights granted in the Constitution. 

   For example, if you were to go to a bank in request of a loan, that bank would do a search into your credit history to ensure that you have a history that is responsible enough for them to trust you with their money. 

   Similarly, however this is money that is free and does not have to be paid back, it is quite reasonable for taxpayers to have some mandated affirmation that their money is going to aid the survival and betterment of those applicants and not to support someone's drug addiction.

   The argument that this new law will limit welfare for people in need is also easily refutable.  If there is no issue with drugs, and the money is being spent on the areas that it was meant to be spent on, then welfare applicants should have no issue with submitting to a drug test. 

   Despite the fact that millions of dollars of aid is dispersed every year and that aid should have strict, enforceable guidelines to its dispersion, it is in the best interest of the applicants to take the drug tests so that they are also assured that the welfare system is functioning in a way that is fair to all recipients. 

  As far as the view that this law is stereotypical of welfare recipients and this only feeds a long held stigma that welfare recipients hold, this law could actually help to remove some of the stereotypes placed on those who collect welfare.  

    If in fact the majority of welfare recipients are not using drugs, then the lack of denial of welfare benefits will prove that there was not a significant issue in the first place, giving assurance to taxpayers who do not collect welfare as well as those who do collect welfare. 

   While there are typically pros and cons to any side of a debate, the biggest positive of the implementation of this law throughout the United States would be that it would help to prevent recipients from purchasing and using illegal drugs while also protecting the safety and interest of the children of welfare recipients. 

   Because this law would help to protect and better welfare recipients, taxpayers, and society as a whole, and because that is one of the goals of the welfare system anyway, there is no reason that this law should not be signed in the remaining states, especially those states with a high percentage of welfare recipients.

 Counterpoint:   

    It is no secret that the United States economy is in a degenerative state at this time, and looks like it will be for some time to come yet. It is also no secret that in this harsh economic period there are many families out there that depend directly on the government's welfare system for financial support. 

    Our government should be given merit for this system, though recent legislation in Florida has the public casting harsher views of it.

    On May 31, governor Rick Scott signed a bill stating that adult recipients of welfare were to be drug tested at their own expense before being validated for government aid.

    Governor Scott claims that the bill is what is best for taxpayers. This bill apparently ensures that taxpayer money will not be spent on drug addiction.

    The goal of this legislation: to deter drug use and ensure that welfare money is not spent on addiction.  I agree that taxpayer money should be used as efficiently as possible.

    Hardworking Americans fund much more than the welfare program. By the rational that taxpayers should be able to ensure their money is not being spent on illegal drugs, there are other groups of people that need to be drug tested. 

    Apart from the entirety of U.S. employees, from president down to mayor and so on, Americans have a right to know that all those corporate CEOs and presidents who were bailed out, receiving enough funds to not only keep their corporations afloat but also to give themselves and their colleagues large bonuses, aren't spending America's hard-earned money on illegal or addictive substances or activities. 

    As we all know, those CEOs will not be drug tested for their money.  So why, then, are the poor economic class in Florida, and soon to be Alabama, being mandated to take a drug test before receiving aid for their family?