Will 2012 be the Year of State-Required Drug Tests for Public Benefits?

 We are only a few weeks into the new year, but statehouse politicians across the country are already racing to see who can be next to introduce a bill that would require drug testing of people receiving public benefits. Within the last month, measures that would impose drug testing requirements have been introduced or are being contemplated in at least eleven states.

The bills typically require beneficiaries to pay for their own drug tests (to be reimbursed later if they come up clean) and force those who test dirty off the rolls for specified periods. They also typically require a period of drug treatment at the would-be beneficiary's expense.

Faced with serious budget deficits as the economy continues sputtering through a weak recovery, would-be populists and small government conservatives see public benefits recipients as easy targets in their battle to ease the burdens of the taxpayers. With many Americans struggling hard to make ends meet, the narrative that welfare recipients or people receiving jobless benefits are just lazy junkies living resonates in some quarters.

Never mind that there is a paucity of evidence that welfare or jobless benefit recipients use drugs at a rate different from the public at large -- at the high end, a Michigan program a decade ago had 10% of welfare recipients testing positive for drugs, while Florida's now halted welfare drug testing program reported only a 2% positive rate, mostly for marijuana, though with data too incomplete at that stage to really know -- drug testing bills remain extremely popular, especially among conservatives.

It's not just Republicans. Although conservative Republicans dominate the legislative politics of drug testing the poor, in two states, Democratic legislators are leading the charge, and in one, it's a Democratic governor who is coming up with the idea.

But no matter the party, the rhetoric of the drug testers is remarkably similar. It's almost like they're reading from the same script.

"The working man, we're all subject to drug testing, and if they're gonna take the hard earned person's money and give it to someone on welfare, I think they ought to be tested the same way," Iowa Rep. Richard Arnold told WHO-TV in Des Moines as he announced his bill to drug test people on unemployment.

"If a job applicant has to take a random drug test, it only seems fair that a welfare applicant should too," said Georgia Rep. Doug McKillip (R-Athens). "We simply cannot allow the drug trade to be funded with government benefits," he told the Athens Banner-Herald. McKillips added that he wanted to apply any savings from the bill to paying for a tax cut on energy for manufacturers.

"If any of my employees fail a drug test, they're going to be fired," said Georgia Rep. Ron Stephens, a Savannah pharmacy owner and Republican Chairman of the House Economic Development and Tourism Committee. "It's leveling the playing field," Stephens insisted to 11 Alive TV in Atlanta. "It's making those recipients be subject to the very same regulations as those getting up going to work for a living," he added.

"Why in God's green pastures would we ever allow $1 of tax-supported assistance to go to an individual that is using illegal drugs?" South Dakota Rep. Mark Kirkeby (R-Rapid City) told the Rapid City Journal.

"I don't think any taxpayer in our state would say they're okay with funding a person's illegal drug use," Rep. John Mizuno (D-Kalihi Valley), who chairs the Human Services Committee, told KHON2-TV in Honolulu. Mizuno has introduced a pair of bills to drug test welfare recipients. "As taxpayers we need to save all we can, we don't need to raise people's taxes."