Unlock document.
This document is partially blurred.
Unlock all pages and 1 million more documents.
Get Access
Pollock 1
Jarrod Pollock
Carol Bealor
Business Law
28 November 2015
Welfare benefits and drug screening
Our country has massive issues with our welfare system, the system is flawed and is
easily beaten and abused. There are many way we as a country can go about helping the system
out and making it more efficient for the people who actually need it. The easiest place to start
this with is mandatory drug tests state wide for all recipients of welfare funding or government
assistance. Due to the nature of the situation this may be seen as an extreme measure to some
people. But I challenge you to would you hire a new hire at a job if they failed a drug test? This
is why mandatory drug testing is a great place to start screenings of people receiving government
aid. There needs to be a place to start for this type of action, and putting a system in place so that
people know they shouldn’t be doing illegal things, or abusing their state funding is very
important. This may be an expensive place to start for something like this in the long run it will
be more beneficial to the system and allow us to weed out some of the people who take
advantage of our help systems unjustly.
While this is not a new idea to our governors or the federal courts, many states including
Missouri, Oklahoma, Utah, Florida, Kansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arizona have put in
measures to drug test certain people in the welfare system, this may be to mixed reviews
currently. This problem stems from small focus groups of testers, and drug tests that are not
stringent enough to cover all of the drugs and ways around standard drug testing. Here are some
of the results posted by these states directly relating to drug test screening and welfare benefits.
Pollock 2
This is the information that was collected by Bryce Covert and Josh Israel for drug tested states
starting with Missouri
Pollock 3
This image show that in 2011, Missouri tested 446 of the State’s 38,970 applicants, and
48 of the tested gave positive drug tests. This cost the state around $336,297. (Covert)
