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Friday, February 13th, 2015

Tennessee’s Drug Tests Of Welfare Recipients Find 37 Drug Users

Author:     Alan Pyke
Source:     Think Progress
Publication Date:     February 10, 2015 at 2:04 pm
 Link: Tennessee’s Drug Tests Of Welfare Recipients Find 37 Drug Users
Stephan:   It is one of the enduring Randian myths of the Theocratic Right that poor people are poor principally because they are lazy drug addled losers. And to prove that one Republican governor after another has raided their state Treasury to get the funds to measure the urine of the poor. It is an example of the complete divorcement of the Right and facts that from first to last these absurd money wasting projects have only  produced evidence of how pathetically out of touch the Right is about social issues. Here is the latest on this trend from Tennessee.
The urine tests so beloved by Theocratic Rightists. Credit: Shutterstock

The urine tests so beloved by Theocratic Rightists.
Credit: Shutterstock

Less than one half of one percent of Tennesseeans who applied for public assistance flunked a drug test in the first six months of the state’s experiment with drug screenings for welfare recipients, according to recently released state figures.

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.

Such an infinitesimal rate of drug use among welfare applicants contrasts sharply with the state’s overall 8 percent rate of drug use. Across the country, states that implement drug tests for low-income families have found that economically vulnerable people are less likely than the general population to use drugs. Utah spent $30,000 on tests that caught just […]

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1 Comment

  1. David T on Friday, February 13, 2015 at 11:59 am

    So is the rate 0.2% or 13%? The way this study was conducted, you can’t tell. The point of the story may be correct, but it misuses statistics, unfortunately.