Nov. 18: "The Hysterical States of America''

For some time now, one of those informal polls that often appear on Face Book has been circulating among my “friends.’’ The question is simple: Should people be drug-tested before they can receive Welfare?

The “yes’’ answers far outnumber the “no’’ answers.

I am not surprised by this, of course.

Yet the more I think about this reaction, the more I am convinced that it says more about the prevailing attitudes of our country than anything else. Over the past few years, our nation has become a hostage to the unreasoning passions of the few. The Tea Party and the Occupy movement represent two sides of the same coin. They are equally intractable, shrill and confrontational. Overheated rhetoric is the currency of our time. And if you don’t fall on one very loud side or another, you are irrelevant.

 

 

We have become the Hysterical States of America. The man who screams loudest, whose rhetoric is most extreme; he is the man whose voice is heard and followed.

 

 

But what does that have to do with drug testing welfare applicants?

Plenty, I think.

On the surface - which is where our passions are most easily stirred - the idea that a person who wants to apply for welfare should not be a drug-abuser seems pretty obvious. Who could really disagree with that idea? The notion that our taxpayer dollars are going to help people finance their addictions is outrageous. The more we think about it, at least the more we think about it from a strictly emotional point of view, the more outraged we are and the more convinced we become that it would be great if there was a law that required a welfare applicant to pass a drug test.

In the Hysterical States of America,we are in no mood to coddle crack-heads.

 

 

So it should be no surprise that when the idea of drug testing for welfare applicants is posed, the favorable response is overwhelming. And that is precisely what happened in Florida,where voters passed a law doing exactly that. The law has yet to be implemented; a judge ruled the Florida law violated the U.S. Constitution, specifically the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure.

Alabama, Louisiana,Kentucky and Oklahoma have also considered similar legislation while a U.S. Senator from Louisianahas proposed a federal law that would require all 50 states to implement acomparable law. Given the Florida ruling, it’s unlikely these efforts will amount to much of anything, however.

 

 

Even so, the issue is worth examining because it speaks to the current climate of debate in our country, which seems to begin and end at the raw nerve ending of our emotions, even at a time in our country when careful, diligent, thorough and dispassionate discussion is most critical. The drug-testing-for-welfare-applicants idea is merely the best available example.

 

 

So let’s peel off the emotional reaction to the question and see what we find.

First, what are the motives behind such a law? There seems to be only two possibilities: Punishment or rehabilitation.

 

 

Although I could imagine there are some who would support the law under the guise that it would help drug users see the errors of their ways, my knowledge of human nature tells me that most people really see the law as a way to punish malefactors. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, of course. So, for the purposes of this examination, we will proceed with the notion that the reason for the law is to punish.

 

 

Who would be punished under this law? Drug-users? Yes. Who else? In other words, would there be any “collateral damage?’’ Yes, an awful lot, I think.

First, if you cut off welfare money to the drug abuser, you are also cutting off welfare to his/her dependants. The law punishes the guilty and the innocent children of the guilty alike. It’s one thing to hold people accountable, but do we believe we should hold their children accountable as well? Are we that angry?

Perhaps you are thinking that any responsible adult would not put his children in that position and you would be right. Well, introduce me to the next responsible addict you run across, OK? The idea that an addict will act in his own best interests – or even in the best interests of those he/she loves – is to fail to understand the nature of addiction. Drug addicts are going to feed their addiction. Whether they get welfare or not is immaterial. But to a child, welfare can mean the difference between having adequate food, clothing or shelter and having those things at all.

Second, under the Florida law – and likely under any similar law that might be proposed – the applicantis required to pay for the drug test and would be reimbursed the cost if he passes.

The first problem is that it creates a situation where you could actually be too poor to get welfare. The second problem is far more disturbing: It creates a situation where even those who pass the drug test suffer since the costs for reimbursing the applicants for the drug tests come out of the pool of available money for the whole program. As a result, every recipient of welfare money would see his allotment decreased, perhaps dramatically decreased.

And to what good end?

I suppose it would, indeed, deny money to some desperate addicts. I suspect a few of those people might say to themselves, “Well,perhaps I should get treatment for my addiction.’’ A larger group, I suspect, would be inclined to say, “Perhaps I should rob someone or steal a car.’’ Call me a pessimist.

 

 

There is much I could add. Alcohol is far more likely to be abused among the poor than drugs, yet no one has called for alcohol tests. The drug test is for applicants only, so there would be no incentive not to use drugs once you are enrolled. Clearly, it’s achieves nothing really except to add another level of bureaucracy to yet another federal program. Generally, my good conservative friends are opposed to bureacracy, but I suppose they are willing to make an exception in this case.

Really, though, is there any need to go any farther? No matter how you dissect it, the worst result would be that the innocent would suffer far more than the guilty.

And yet when my friends – all of them kind, decent, caring people - were asked if such a law is a good idea, they loved it. They loved it because it catered to their sense of outrage and there was no effort to examine the matter carefully.

We are seeing far too much of this sort of skin-deep reasoning these days, from immigration to taxes. People are angry and somebody has to pay. Let the chips fall where they may. We are unable or unwilling to see beyond naked emotion.

Heaven help us, huh?