The most amazing law in years:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/31/us-florida-welfare-drugs-idUSTRE74U6W320110531

How else do you monitor whether people are using drugs other than testing them for it?

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A law that makes sense? I don't buy it.

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A law that makes sense and may be ruled unconstitutional by the courts if the ACLU has their way.

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Im torn on this. I fear what sort of precedence this sets. So in order for children to get help from the state, their parents have to be clean? I don't know man....
Scenario: Dad smokes some weed on the weekends and because he fails a test, the kids go without food? You can punish adults all you like, but it's the kids that will pay the most.

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Thanks Rich, that makes a lot more sense now.

I think the food stamp program needs to be altered as well. I worked at a convenience store in high school, and we sold pop and candy bars and all sorts of unneeded high priced crap to people that have food stamps.

Just make it a law that you can't use food stamps at convenience stores. Some, if not most, of these people are on food stamps because they have problems managing their money....so the program should help teach how to do that.

I also think if you can't get by so bad that you need food stamps, that you shouldn't be able to afford alcohol or tobacco, either...but that'd be difficult to monitor, and difficult to revoke food stamps for a kid because his dad is an alcoholic.

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If dad has money for weed, he doesn't need welfare. That's the purpose of the law.

The government should make food stamp stores where you can purchase from a fine selection of government cheese, skim milk, rice and cheap toilet paper using food stamps and make them unviable for use anywhere else.

You'll see how quickly people will try harder to get off food stamps.

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Setting up all those stores in communities across the country and finding employees to run and manage it all would be FAR FAR more wasteful.
As for Iowa, I hardily agree with you, candy and pop should be precluded from the food program. I also think they should make healthy options more mandatory, though I'm not sure how much overhead would be involved in fairly implementing that. Perhaps unhealthy foods would cost more and healthy choices might cost less.............. but I imagine it would be a pain to figure all that out.

It was a joke...

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Make it more like WIC. With that, you are given vouchers for certain products like X amount of formula, X bottles of juice, etc. And you have to do an interview to get the vouchers every time.

The ACLU is calling this illegal search and seizure.
Personally, I call it a reasonable part of the application process.

Yup. That being said, what's in it for Scott? Isn't there a conflict of interest due to his wife being part of the board of a company that makes these drug tests?

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Then the ACLU needs to fight that battle for everyone submitted to a drug test. Not just welfare. Hell, I get money from the government, why do I have to get tested?

I'm don't know your situation and I am not commenting on that.

I see a big difference in someone who paid into, for example, Social Security or Unemployment, receiving benefits versus someone going to the government for a handout. There are already conditions for receiving government charity (and that is what the program is).

This is just another (in my mind) reasonable condition: pass a drug test.

We have a "war on drugs". Why should we support the drug cartels through our public welfare programs?

If her company has some kind of exclusive contract, then yes. If it is one of several, then probably not. To me, that part is a minor issue, especially considering how blatantly the Bush administration flaunted the conflict of interest rules.

Besides, I'd rather have our government money going to a drug company than to a drug cartel.

There's a difference?

Drug companies pay a little bit in taxes and don't have their goon squads causing bloodshed on the streets (not as often at least)

Ya that's a tough one, i think i'd want an exclusion for pot definitely. I'm always afraid of government invading privacy as a precedent, starts with welfare and moves on drug tests everywhere, but i think in this case that's a pretty silly slippery slope argument. But ya Iowa I work in a convenient store too and accepting food stamps there is absolutely ludicrous people buy three dollar pop-cycles on food stamps. And there are soooo many meth users and pill addicts and what not with food stamps. So in that case I could see that being a helpful preclusion for welfair. Is there any sort of rejoining after being tested, drug counseling or something? Something geared towards getting people off drugs in the bill? Would that even work shoot just more money... I don't know. What does everyone think about Ron Paul wanting to dismantle ss, and welfair, and whatnot? (Hopefully I got that right I believe I heard him say that) I don't see him being able to get that through congress but its interesting to think what would happen or whether it could be fixed or at least cut back. Not a shot at Paul I've just been pondering the idea of gov't programs.