The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 75/No. 39      October 31, 2011

 
US rulers push drug tests
for welfare, unemployment
 
BY JOHN STUDER  
In three dozen states proposals were made this year to impose mandatory drug testing for people applying for welfare, unemployment compensation, food stamps, public housing, home heating assistance, technical school enrollment and other social programs.

This latest attack on privacy and constitutional protections takes place as state and local governments seek to slash aid and other programs to assure they can meet payments to bondholders—their number one budget priority. At the same time, growing numbers of working people face unemployment, declining incomes, evictions and mortgage defaults, tuition hikes, and rising prices for food and other basic necessities.

A bill demanding mandatory state drug testing of all welfare applicants nationwide is pending in Congress.

A law adopted in Florida requires all workers who get or seek state aid to take a drug test—and pay for it themselves.

The law has been challenged in court by Luis Lebron, who lost his job in 2008 and has exhausted his veteran’s benefits. He goes to school at the University of Central Florida and cares for his four-year-old son and disabled mother.

“I defended the Constitution,” Lebron told the media, referring to his military service. “Now I am asking the Constitution to defend me.” He added, “It’s insulting and degrading that people think I’m using drugs just because I need a little help to take care of my family while I finish up my education.”

Drug testing welfare applicants is “a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure,” Maria Kayanan, Associate Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which is handling Lebron’s challenge, told the Militant.

Texas is one of 12 states that considered imposing drug testing on workers applying for unemployment benefits this year. In addition to testing all applicants, the law would bar unemployment benefits to anyone denied a job because they failed a company drug test.

In Chicago, the Housing Authority has proposed that everyone who lives in public housing, or applies to live there, must pass a drug test.

In New York City, officials require all those who apply for food stamps—and there are now 1.8 million New Yorkers who get them—to be electronically fingerprinted. The state of Arizona has the same requirement.

Six students at Linn State Technical College in Missouri have filed a class-action suit against a decree by the state-funded public college to impose mandatory drug tests on all students. School administrators announced each student would be billed $50. They claim that since they are preparing youth for jobs, where they increasingly face drug tests, getting tested at school fits with their life “vector.”  
 
 
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