The latest bad idea circulating on the American right is drug-testing anyone getting food stamps, welfare, etc. North Carolina is the latest to pass a bill on this. Of course, the Republicans behind this didn't want to have themselves and other state employees from undergoing the same test.
Republicans in the North Carolina state Senate on Monday pushed through bill that would strip public benefits like food stamps and job training for people who fail a drug test.
In 35-15 vote largely along party lines, senators passed SB 594. A single Democrat voted for the bill, and no Republicans voted against it.
The bill requires those applying for benefits to pay for their own drug tests. Applicants who test negative would be eligible to have the costs of their tests reimbursed. The policy could cost the state more than $2.1 million.
At the same time, senators rejected an amendment offered by Democratic state Sen. Gladys Robinson that would have drug tested lawmakers, the governor and cabinet secretaries.
“We receive state funds, we represent the law, we institute policy,” Robinson told senators on Monday night. “So, it should not be above any of us to submit to drug screening.”
Republican State Sen. Jim Davis said that he did not mind being tested, but insisted that he would vote against the amendment because it had no mechanism to provide him with a reimbursement for the $100 test.
Instead of voting on Robinson’s amendment, state Senator Tom Apodaca (R) used a substitute amendment as a parliamentary maneuver to kill the the proposal.
“The substitute amendment is offered to have the affect of killing the other amendment,” Democratic state Sen. Martin Nesbitt explained in a floor speech. “You need to know that before you vote because you’ll be killing the one that requires a drug test of the leaders of this state since we want to require it for the followers of this state.”
“And we seem to be getting into a situation where where we’re kind above the people,” he added. “Kind of looking down on them, telling them what to do or telling them to be quiet while we talk, and I just sense that it keeps on going.”
Why are Republicans getting on the bandwagon for mass drug-testing which will cost the state an estimated $2.1 million a year? Well, who do you think is going to make money off of these tests?
The thirst for urine can be traced to the military’s 1971 Operation Golden Flow, aimed at detecting druggies among Vietnam veterans. Launched in response to rumors of heroin addiction, the test disproportionately netted marijuana users, since one byproduct of marijuana, carboxy-THC, lingers in the body longer than that of harder drugs. (In contrast, the body flushes out the byproducts of harder drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, within a day.) Nevertheless, before long, all service members were required to urinate in a cup at least once every two years.
Then there was the executive order issued by Ronald Reagan in 1986, which warned that “the use of illegal drugs, on or off duty, by federal employees in certain positions…may pose a serious risk to national security.” The order mandated that all federal agencies implement drug-testing programs to “show the way towards achieving drug-free workplaces.” Two years later, Reagan went one step further, signing the Drug Free Workplace Act, which mandated urine tests for every employee working for a federal grantee and even those working for some contractors.
At first, the medical profession dismissed urine testing as “chemical McCarthyism”—and ineffective to boot, since a worker using cocaine several times a week was more likely to pass a drug test than a colleague who’d smoked a joint at a party the previous Saturday night. Meanwhile, most tests ignored alcohol, which is the drug most often blamed for workplace accidents.
“It’s like learning that somebody drank beer three days ago,” says Bill Piper, director of national affairs with the Drug Policy Alliance. “What’s that going to say about how functional they are at work today? It’s unscientific and discriminatory.”
But the Reagan administration saw drug tests as essential for cracking down on a population largely outside the reach of law enforcement: people smoking pot in the privacy of their own homes. “Because anyone using drugs stands a very good chance of being discovered, with disqualification from employment as a possible consequence, many will decide that the price of using drugs is just too high,” read a 1989 White House report.
In the decades since, drug-testing companies have marketed urine tests as a wise investment for all employers. They claim that any drug user is a less productive worker, and more likely to cause workplace accidents, show up late for work or simply quit. Such claims persist despite a 1994 review, by the National Academy of Sciences, of all the independent research published on workplace drug testing, which found little support to back up those claims.
Indeed, one study of employers in the high-tech sector found that drug testing “reduced rather than enhanced productivity.” Performance-based tests, researchers found, are far more effective at assessing a worker’s ability to perform safety-sensitive jobs than drug testing. Unlike urine tests, these tests detect drug impairment and a host of other factors (fatigue, stress, alcohol) far more likely to compromise a worker’s concentration than past marijuana use.
Nevertheless, the escalation of the drug war would prove more powerful than the evidence that undermined it, producing a powerful coalition of government and private industry players determined to convince employers of the wisdom of monitoring their workers’ bladders.
So how about checking everyone on, say, Social Security Disability, for alcohol?
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