Daily Kos

Not people: REPUBLICANS are the ones pushing this shit, invariably.

Because the GOP OWNS the War on Drugs.

REPUBLICANS want the poor tested for druuuuuuuuuuugs as part of scaring them away from applying for assistance so they will starve, get sick and die.

Plus republicans INSIST on being shitty, irredeemable assholes about people having a good time.

My job is starting to suck major shit secondary to the issues of having aclinical business run by somebody not just completely ignorant about mental health but super-rich: they can do what they want because they bought the business.

Because of republicans I will have to stop smoking pot at the moment I quit this job and start lookking for another, so I can PISS on command like a good American.

So, getting any assistance or getting a job: the GOP is sucking shit at every opportunity.

Motherfuckers.

How many tests did they have done? How much does each test cost? (Who owns the testing company?)
When they did this in Florida, it was very expensive, yielded few drug users and IIRC, Rick Scott's wife's company made the money.

How many were taking legal drugs, many of which are unnecessarily prescribed by doctors getting their largesse from pharma. And many are sold on street. some kill.

Out of more than 16,000 applicants from the beginning of July through the end of 2014, just 37 tested positive for illegal drug use. While that amounts to roughly 13 percent of the 279 applicants who the state decided to test based on their answers to a written questionnaire about drug use, the overall rate among applicants is just 0.2 percent.

Sadly, this would otherwise be a good tool for "proving" to the RW that most people on welfare are NOT druggies.

Yay small government!

Oh wait.

Another sadly stupid chapter in the war on some drugs

if I recall correctly, even if they are found to be using drugs, you still cannot just remove the client from the rolls.  You must enroll them in a treatment program, and if they refuse to do the program, only then can you remove them.

Additionally, the federal rules already allow for a case worker to require a client to take a drug test if the suspect the client is using.

So this whole idea of drug testing everyone wastes money in more than one way.

Essentially, it's a money wasting dog-and-pony show.

Whenever a politician is talking about taxpayers money grab hold of your wallet cause they'll be wasting one way or another!

“That’s 37 people who should not be receiving taxpayer subsidies, because they are not behaving as they are supposed to,” said state Rep. Glen Casada, a Republican from Franklin. “If the taxpayers are going to support you there are certain criteria you need to adhere to. This is a good use of taxpayer money.”

Here's a little background on Reo Casada and wasting taxpayers money from Wiki

"In 2009, Casada was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit in federal court, Captain Pamela Barnett v. Barack Hussein Obama, which claimed that Barack Obama was not an American citizen and therefore ineligible to be President of the United States. Judge David O. Carter ruled that Casada and other state legislators did not have standing to sue, since the supposed harm they feared was "highly speculative and conjectural."[3]
"In April 2011, he tried to repeal a workplace non-discrimination bill for sexual orientation and gender identity in Nashville.[4][5][6] However, in an interview, he explained he was trying to "create a uniform environment across the state, similar to what the interstate commerce clause does for our country."[7] The bill was supported by David Fowler's socially conservative Family Action Council of Tennessee, and the Log Cabin Republicans were opposed to it.[7]"
"In the summer of 2011, he traveled with other Tennessee legislator on a trip to China paid for in part by the Hanban"

work but not smoke weed, I see....

and hungry.

and does 'illegal drugs' include pot?

…"the overall rate among applicants is just 0.2 percent."

Now, I am utterly opposed to this drug testing. But this abuse of statistics doesn't help the cause of getting rid of that testing.

You can select 279 people to test, find 13% of them are positive, and then extrapolate that to the population of 15,721 untested people and say the positive rate is only 0.2%.  

It is not constitutionally permissible to require individuals to waive their fundamental rights (in this case, the right to privacy & the protection against forced self-incrimination) in order to receive from the government a benefit or service for which they are eligible. Otherwise, such rights would exist only in the theoretical sense & cease to have any real meaning. Today it's "welfare", but tomorrow it could be driver's licenses, business licenses, professional certifications or any number of things. What is more, many of these things are essential for a person to practice his trade or function as an adult in the modern world. As always when liberty is abridged, it's the unpopular groups that first have their rights taken away.

Though the Supreme Court has yet to rule on a case with these particulars, so far the lower courts have voided these laws in every case that has come before them.

Not so long ago, I expounded on this subject in a diary.
Drug-testing for welfare? Federal courts says "no" to Florida program.

Tennessee has also recently passed a law requiring hospitals to refer for prosecution any mothers who give birth to a baby with traces of illegal drugs in its system. This law too, while wildly popular with the red-state electorate, also appears to be unconstitutional, per the Supreme Court's ruling in Ferguson v. City of Charleston, S.C. in 2000.

did cost the taxpayers of Tenn.

...exceed the "savings" from kicking those people off welfare?  Will it save more money than the ultimate social costs borne by the tax payers when these people are locked in prison to the tune of $50,000 per year?  

Question after that: How much money did the drug lab chosen by the state to do all of these tests donate? To which politicians?  Who owns the lab? How much, and to whom did they contribute?  

Third question: When a person tested positive, was there a second test to make sure it was not a false positive? Was there an investigation to ensure that whatever drug they tested positive for was not legally obtained? How similar to heroin does an opiate-based painkiller look?  What about Codeine?

What sorts of due process provisions are in place for these people to appeal?  How much will that cost the state in litigation expenses?  

You know, we let the President assume office and all he has to do is take an oath. He doesn't have to pee in a bottle. And then we entrust him with the nuclear football. So why are we drug-testing anybody, for employment or for any other reason? Is it freaking important? I think not. And if public officials want to make it mandatory, let them get on the must be tested list too.

Tennessee. Imagine my pride. /s

Tennessee are innumerate or merely illiterate, given Florida's abysmal experiment in drug testing; which famously resulted in the drug tests costing much more than they would have saved if they just gave everyone the benefits.

Oh, wait: Rethugs everywhere are innumerate. They keep proving it over and over and over again.

That is why the economy has ALWAYS improved under Democrats and has ALWAYS tanked under the GOP since Eisenhower.

Have these mandatory drug tests been challenged? Aside from being a huge waste of money, there are STRONG Fifth Amendment grounds on which to refuse and thereby find unconstitutional such tests. Why?

1. such laws presume guilt.
2. such laws require you to prove your innocence.
3. by making such tests mandatory is the same as being compelled to testify against oneself.

Where the hell are our constitutional legal eagles on this?

And please don't effn mention drug testing in the private sector; those are administered as a condition of employment - if you wish to work for them, you'll take the test. If not, apply elsewhere.

These are government benefits which the state requires self-incrimination in order to receive.

Lets start drug testing farmers that receive substies from the Government, and CEO's whose Corporations receive money from the Feds. Business people who receive loans from big banks, and politicians who receive money from bankers and so forth.

Well if you send them a questionnaire and inform them they will be tested I guess for the sake of free benefits they would clean up for the test.

Our fine example of a gov. here in Wisconsin is trying to force this one here also. So who do you think owns the testing company here? sick to my stomach in Wisconsin.

These same people want less Government.  Spending tax $$$ on a program like this is OK!

"Out of more than 16,000 applicants from the beginning of July through the end of 2014, just 37 tested positive for illegal drug use. While that amounts to roughly 13 percent of the 279 applicants who the state decided to test based on their answers to a written questionnaire about drug use, the overall rate among applicants is just 0.2 percent."

This is SO deceptive.  The ONLY way you could accurately say that only 0.2 percent of 16,000 applicants tested positive is if you test all 16,000 of them, which thank God they aren't doing.  Now THAT would be a giant waste of money.  Instead, they tested 279 at a cost of $5,295, a tiny waste of money.  And hey, maybe some of the people they tested will get help and turn their lives around.

How about a law to DEMAND random drug testing of all our so-called leaders? After all, they're the ones passing these laws, they work for US (supposedly), and by all indications they must be REALLY STONED most of the time.

Republicans don't care about cost effectiveness in government spending,....State after state under GOP control have done this, and all have the same result; wasted tax dollars.  They did it with unnecessary wars, unpaid tax breaks for the wealthy and corps, phony and repititious investigations, and the 56 wasted votes to repeal the ACA.  Yearly deficits have always gone up in recent history under republican presidents and many states now too....It takes democrats to control wasted spending,

The goal is not to get people to test positive.  The goal is to get people to choose between doing drugs and getting free money.  During this same time period where 37 tested positive, 4,343 adults, 18% of welfare recipients, voluntarily left the program.

have been instituted in the Volunteer State.

those who criticize and condemn the use of marijuana continue to swill their legal drug alcohol, which causes more deaths, violence, misery, broken marriages, lost homes, lost jobs and accidents than all other drugs combined.

Alcohol is a drug and should be considered such.

of drug testing. Those testing 'suspected or admitted' drug users (the type of drug doesn't matter). So with the tests they get to deny one the right to live, or the testee can commit a crime in order to feed themselves and be locked up in one of the privatized jails.

See, this all benefits society while not providing jobs for those in need. I mean we can't have those 'types' working.
But since it is a racists object to profile I wonder exactly who they are going to test. But surely we can trust them.

One has to realize that America is a democracy in which all are treated equally.
I couldn't be mistaken; could I?

Actually America is a joke being led by fools.

how much it cost to find out who was using drugs among the recipients of public assistance, like a per capita cost?  Maybe compare it to the "savings" of the program, if you accept the premise that money you don't provide for public assistance doesn't end up getting spent in other ways on the consequences of not providing assistance.  (No point in arguing about moral imperatives with most Republicans.)

It's always the dirt-poor, retard, parasitic rightwing states that try this.

We should drug test all the lawmakers who take public money to do their jobs.

Florida wasted a lot of money too. Something like 97% of those tested passed, so the taxpayers picked up the cost of their tests (since that was the deal if they passed). Oh, and good ol' Rick Scott owned a chain of clinics where many of the tests were given, so a big chunk of those tax dollars went right into his bank account.

Drug testing in FL was ruled unconstitutional due to illegal search and seizure. When does that happen in TN?

PS - I'm sure there are more than 37 tax cheats in TN's 1% who are doing far more harm to the state economy than those 37 people who were collecting benefits.

Why not test farmers collecting huge Farm Bill subsidies? Why should we pay them to sit around all day, not growing crops while smoking pot?

Married people who have kids get a $1500 buck per child tax break! Why should we pay that to lousy parents who use drugs!!??

Congress makes a pretty penny! Why don't we see whose just loafing around DC, getting high or DRUNK, while awaiting their big buck lobbying job I'm paying good tax money to prep them for!

What a great idea!

This is big $$ for corrupt govt contractors.

Here in FL, as soon as Scott became Governor.  He gave up his ownership in the largest drug-testing company in FL (Solantic) to his wife to prevent any conflict of interest as he attempted to institute drug-testing for welfare recipients.