Rebuttle Arguement to Testing a Pissy Situation

While reading a colleague's blog, I was moved to give a different point of view to Amanda Thompson's blog entitled  "Test Or Not To Test"http://kidnappedanddraggedtotexas.blogspot.com/.  Drug testing of welfare and unemployment recipients will be doing just the opposite of the reason David Dewhurst gave, "We owe it to Texas taxpayers to structure our welfare and unemployment programs in a way that guarantees recipients are serious about getting back to work."  This statement will not be the case.  In fact, it will cost either the taxpayers or the very people it's intended to help.

 In an article by A. Miranda, CBS Houstonhttp://houston.cbslocal.com entitled  "A Closer Look At Welfare Drug Testing" had wrote "As of Dec. 2010, Texas had 18,106 adults and 103,852 children receiving assistance for a total population of of 121,958. Temporary Aid to Needy Families, TANF, says that 3.8% of this population are drug users. A report from TANF says that the numbers are too small to justify using resources to test this small population."  She went on to say, "Without accessibility to housing, supplemental income, food, employment assistance and training, banned recipients will have a higher risk of becoming the responsibility of the criminal justice system."

Jason Stanford said, “In Texas, we pay welfare moms with three kids $260 a month. In other words, our welfare moms don't have enough money to buy drugs or enough time to take them. But don't worry, Rick Perry has a solution for a problem that doesn't exist: He wants to make welfare recipients take drug tests.” www.huffingtonpost.com

Maranda also wrote, "The average cost of a drug test runs $35-76.  The ACLU  says there are additional incalculable costs that include personnel to administer the tests to guard confidentiality of the tests, confirm the tests and carry out legal services. Other costs associated with testing are retests. In order to be protected against false positives, tests would have to be repeated. The cost of catching one drug abuser will run $20,000-$77,000.00 per individual."  Therefore, it is apparent that Dewhurst interest doesn't lye with the benefit recipients nor the tax payers.  Most likey he and those supporting this atrocity have stock in the pharmaceutical companies which will profit from in need people's misfortune.