Tag: drug testing

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Tennessee Drug Tests Welfare Applicants, Finds Just 1 Person Using Drugs

The state is using its tight welfare budget to administer the expensive tests. Tennessee is all set to deny welfare benefits to poor residents based solely on the fact that they’d used drugs. In July they rolled out a program to drug test welfare applicants, which would create even worse health issues for already-struggling addicts. However, the first month’s tests proved that most welfare applicants weren’t using drugs in the first place: of more than 800 applicants, the state caught only one person using drugs. The testing program was popularised and enacted, no doubt, in response to the stereotype that poor people who use government assistance programs tend to be drug users. But it appears that the stereotype is baseless. Just 12 people in Utah’s similar drug testing program came […] Read More

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The NY Times’ Hypocritical Employee Drug Tests, Like Marijuana Prohibition, Need to End

Workplace drug testing is unjust and ruins lives. The following article first appeared on Substance.com:  Unless you’ve been in hiding, you’ll know that the New York Times made history last Sunday, July 27, when it launched a series of editorials calling for an end to marijuana prohibition. The first piece, “Repeal Prohibition, Again,” was a complete reversal of the Grey Lady’s hitherto cautious—some would say conservative—position on the drug war: “It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished. It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit […] Read More