Matt Welch discusses his views on Orrin Hatch proposing that people seeking unemployment benefits or welfare be tested for drugs.
This is, alas, nothing new. In addition to social-welfare recipients, lawmakers have identified several other sub-classes of people ripe for being forced by the state to urinate on command, including (but not limited to) student athletes, kids who dare take part in other extra-curricular activities, and even kids who do nothing all day but draw “I Heart Conor” in their Pee-Chees. (They still have those, right?)
Always missing from these flippant tramplings of our privacy rights are two classes of people: Lawmakers themselves, and recipients of corporate welfare. Wouldn’t you feel just a little safer if Patrick Kennedy got his fluids checked on regular basis? Ya think some of those juicy subsidies for film productions ever land in the hands of people who use drugs?
Well, let me ask Welch this: Is your abhorrence of drug testing absolute? Will you stand up and say stop to all of it?
I ask this as someone who has been subjected to random drug and alcohol testing by government fiat for nearly a quarter of a century now. Long time readers know what I do for a living. I have urinated on command more times than I can count.
I was given a choice when the regulations were enacted: comply or find employment elsewhere.
So are my rights being violated Mr. Welch? Or are your principles situational and “nuanced”?
And before you leap into this one let me make something completely clear. Even the people who sweep floors and empty wastebaskets at nuclear plants are subjected to these rules. As well as full criminal background checks, credit history checks and having their fingerprints taken and filed with the FBI. (And trust me, when a background check is run, every reference is actually contacted by phone.)
Not that I expect Welch to reply, but I’d be interested in my reader’s take on this one.
I’m the wrong guy to ask because except for a few years in the late 90s, I’ve been subject to random drug testing because of school athletics or employment conditions since 1981. I could have not played high school sports, stayed out of the service, and chosen a different line of work if I wanted to avoid it.
My short answer is that there are no privacy concerns here. A ward of the state is a ward of the state. I would draw a line between welfare checks and unemployment checks, though. Employers pay unemployment premiums for employees, so unemployment benefits are more akin to insurance. Or, they used to be–I have no idea what the situation nowadays.
Any able-bodied adult collecting a welfare check shouldn’t be eligible to vote and should feel lucky that he doesn’t have to trade an organ or two to get it. What’s a couple ounces of urine and the potential for a stay at Graybar Hotel in that light?
Like most of us in the private sector, I’ve been subject to random drug testing since time out of mind, or about 1980, which is getting back about that far.
Business has that right, and obligation. If they have a drugged-up employee damage someone with machinery, a forklift, or whatever else, they are subject to being sued.
If I have to be clean and sober to earn the money that the .Gov confiscates from me to give to other people who do nothing to earn it, the least we can expect is that they spend it on something besides drugs, I’d think.
If they can afford dope, they don’t need my money!
I’m quite Libertarian when it comes to the question of legalizing it, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’d still have to pass drug tests at work. (Alcohol is legal, but if I have it in my system at work, they’ll fire me in a New York Minute, and be fully within their rights!)
As it is for those of us who pay for it, so should it be for those who collect.
I’m prepared to be quite draconian on this issue, even well over the top, and then some.
I’d support drug testing for anyone who draws a government paycheck or receives welfare benefits of any type including Food Stamps, AFDC, housing assistance, utility assistance, or farm subsidies, etc, etc.
That goes double for every single employee in Washington DC, Congressional staff and elected representatives included, all military personnel, and members of every federal, state, and local executive, judicial, legislative, and administrative staff, and any regulatory or administrative agency here in the US or acting for the US through any International agency. Every damn mother’s son or daughter of them.
Every inmate, guard, and staff member in every penal institution, every teacher, professor, or researcher receiving federal grants, every student on federal loans, every cop and fireman, border guard, forest ranger, sky cop, heck with this – test them all.
Anyone and everyone who feeds on taxpayer funds gets tested regularly or gets no money.
The problem with the concept of privacy relating to drugs and alcohol is that they affect behavior beyond the private setting.
You cannot plead privacy if you take some drug or get blasted on drink and proceed to drive a car. For that matter you cannot even engage with other people outside of the room where you got stoned or smashed, because you are simply taking the problem out there.
In the UK we are aware that a number of Brits regard drink as okay, and therefore drunken behavior is not condemned. Boozers are somehow “forgiven” for doing things while drunk, that their loss of control and subsequent damage (sometimes dramatically reducing other people’s lives) is somehow okay because they had had a drink too many — as if it was in some way ‘understandable’ to behave badly while intoxicated. But when the boozer staggered out of the pub or club or bar, they stopped being private. Their right to having any right of privacy stopped at the door to the outside world.
There is also evidence here that more and more people are driving while still having the effects of drugs from the night before running through their system.
So yes, if you can keep drink and drugs private solely and exclusively and never let them spill into the world, you can have the right to privacy. But otherwise, no.
Ropelight,
Your draconian, over-the-top views on this issue have forced me to reevaluation my position.
I’m now with you.
Anyone arguing that accepting taxpayer money from the US Government is too low a bar to subject the recipient to potential self-incrimination should have a look at Executive Order 11246 and then check the self-reporting required by the OFCCP.
I agree with Ropelight, too.
If someone does not want to be randomly drug tested, then they should not take any taxpayer money, ever. If someone refuses a drug test or fails it, they should not receive any more tax payer money, ever.