Tennessee’s first year of drug testing welfare recipients uncovered drug use by less than 0.2 percent of all applicants for the state’s public assistance system.
The state implemented the testing regime in the summer of 2014, adding three questions about narcotics use to the application form for aid. Anyone who answers “yes” to any of the three drug questions must take a urine test or have their application thrown away immediately. Anyone who fails a urine test must complete drug treatment and pass a second test, or have their benefits cut off for six months.
In total, just 1.6 percent of the 28,559 people who applied for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits in the first year of testing answered one of the three screening questions positively. Out of the 468 people who peed in a state-funded cup, 11.7 percent flunked the test.
With 55 people testing positive for drugs out of an applicant pool of nearly 30,000, Tennessee’s testing system uncovered that a whopping 0.19 percent of those who […]
The insanity of the Right never stops-they should be drug tested as a condition of holding public office. How many do you think will fail? And these people claim to be Christians!! I’m surprised that they aren’t testing to see if the families receiving TANF believe in witches and goblins-after all it’s almost Halloween, eh?
These politicians who want the testing should be tested themselves because they are the ones with money to buy what appears to be an expensive habit, and they are more likely to be the ones who need testing upon looking at their stupid rules which they make. We all know that the Presidents of the U.S. have used marijuana since the sixties because they have openly admitted using it, so why do people who are in dire circumstances made to take the tests?.