Drug Test Welfare Recipients?

Not all of it is sold by the recipient; and stolen cards are not nearly the problem that the "stamps" were because they require a pin number.

Actually, "everybody" does not know this, only those who get their news from sit coms. Since they went to the card system, fraud is minimal.

The amount is calculated by the needs of the average person eating a well balanced diet.

Since nobody else here seems to know much about poor people here is the reality:

Most people who loose their job wait until they are at rock bottom before going to the state for help. By that time they are in deep shit. All too often the state takes more than a month and I've seen them take as much as three months to approve someone for assistance. So calculate that for a single person at $150 per month and he gets $450 in that third month when approved.

Since no one can retroactively feed themselves, that leaves $300 in extra funds. By that time you don't have any gas to go to the grocery store, no toilet paper, soap and other essentials that food stamps do not pay for. What I've seen happen here is for this person to go to the store with a friend and buy some groceries for the friend and maybe someone else who pays them the cash for the groceries. Since these are usually friends they give a dollar for a dollar's worth of food.

I've seen people eating beans and hot dogs for months to get enough money for a visit to the doctor or to buy a car so they can get a job, or to buy clothes or medicine for their kid(s).

Before ragging on poor people you need to walk a few miles in their worn out shoes. It's ridiculous to punish the poor, who are being punished enough for their situation, because of the actions of a few crooks.

Btw...the 3 years I was out of work, it took me a year to get food stamps and every joint I had was compliments of a friend.

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excuse me, but i wasn't ragging on poor people. i am poor. i recieved stamps at one time.

 

Well, then, you should know that the govt. is not giving too much food assistance for a well balanced diet.


I would like to say that I agree with N.Y. in that sugar drinks should not be purchased with food stamps as well as many other items that promote bad health. I had my 6 month physical today and my doctor told me that I would have diabetes soon if I don't quit drinking Pepsi. I already have "metabolic syndrome" from way too much sugar.

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wow, you read that all wrong. but, whatever.

 

The majority are. If not by the recipient then who?
Debit cards are sold just as easily as stamps were, they go for the same price.

It's common knowledge that they are sold, and how much they are sold for.

In the future please refrain from your snide remarks, i guarantee you wouldn't talk to me like that in person, keep that in mind.

I know many people who were on stamps and now are on debit, they still sell them.

Have any data to back that up?

 

When cheats undermine others’ lives


The rules governing the ebb and flow of California welfare benefits are fairly strict.
For example, the purpose of state welfare is to help those who really need help, perhaps a single parent with two kids earning less than $14,436 a year. That’s the top end of the qualifying standard for state welfare. Anyone who’s tried to live, or is trying, on $14,436 a year is aware of the difficulties.
But the rules can only go so far. Sometimes they get bent a little — or a lot. Case in point:
The Los Angeles Times began reporting during the summer on a particularly loathsome form of cheating — welfare recipients accessing their accounts in remote locations, many of them places you might like to go for a vacation.
California welfare customers accessed their accounts while in Las Vegas, to the tune of $11 million last year. More than $1 million of those welfare funds apparently ended up in the cash drawers at chi-chi boutiques in some of Vegas’ fanciest hotels. Nearly $8,000 in California welfare money was accessed at the Venetian’s Grand Canal Shoppes. When it’s “Shoppes” and not “Shop,” you know prices are high.
California officials can’t be certain the welfare money was spent in those high-end stores, only that welfare recipients used the cash machines there to get some of their monthly stipend.
The Times’ investigation also revealed that $16,010 was withdrawn from ATMs on cruise ships. While they were at it, reporters also dug up the fact that more than half the casinos and card rooms in California are part of the ATM network authorized for welfare fund withdrawals.
Is this starting to make your blood boil, even a little? It should.
Welfare is supposed to be a lifeline to people who might otherwise sink under the weight of a bad economy, a lost job or a disability. It’s not supposed to support the nation’s gambling and vacation industries.
One of the problems is that investigators at the county level who are responsible for tracking down welfare cheats typically won’t even question a recipient about spending habits — if that person is outside the state less than 30 days.
Another problem, of course, is that whenever anyone is handing out money, for whatever reason, a certain percentage of undeserving people will try, and usually find a way to grab some of it. It’s not unlike what happens when you pour blood into water where sharks are known to lurk.
When the first of the Times’ casino/welfare stories appeared, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised to stand behind his commitment to root out waste, fraud and abuse of various state programs, the welfare system among them.
The Schwarzenegger administration this week ordered a ban on the withdrawal of welfare money at casinos and on cruise ships. The order was effective immediately, which may come as a shock to the scofflaws who are on the public dole, but think gambling or lounging is a proper use of taxpayer dollars.
Between January 2007 and May 2010, nearly
$70 million meant to help impoverished Californians and their families survive has, instead, been accessed in casinos, trendy shops and aboard cruise ships. When taxpayers complain about welfare fraud, this is precisely what they’re talking about.
These are the kinds of abuses that fuel an anti-welfare backlash, which sometimes results in changes to systems that truly do help a lot of people. It would be a shame if the actions of a few spoil chances for a better life for the many.


Source

 

It doesn't make my blood boil because that's a small fraction of California welfare money. It's articles like that that feed into the problem. I can find you tons of articles about tax cheats, doesn't change the fact most people do in fact pay their taxes

 

From the non-partisan "Center On Budget and Policy Priorities"# The Food Stamp Program is efficient and effective. Program integrity has improved dramatically in recent years and food stamp error rates are now at an all-time low. USDA data show that over 98 percent of food stamp benefits go to eligible households. The low error rate is a major accomp*lishment for a large benefit program that is administered by thousands of eligi*bil*ity workers in state and local offices across the country.
# As the U. S. Government Ac*countability Office (GAO) reported in May 2005, “[t]he pay*ment error rate has fallen each year since 1999 … This decline in the payment error rate has been wide*spread: the rate fell in 42 states and the District of Columbia, and the rates in 18 of these states fell by at least one-third.”
# Almost ninety-nine percent of food stamp benefits are issued to eligible persons, the vast bulk of whom are children and parents in low-income families, senior citizens, and people with disabilities.
# On June 24, the U.S. De*partment of Agricul*ture (USDA) announced that the national combined payment error rate in 2004 reached is sixth consecutive all-time low at just 5.88 percent. Until recently 6 percent was the threshold the Food Stamp Act established for exemplary perfor*mance. An error rate below 6 percent qualified a state for a bonus payment or enhanced funding. Now, because of improved payment accuracy, the national average has exceeded this exemplary level.

 

It is also shows only a small fraction of where the money really goes.

How does doing research on where My tax dollars go feed into the problem?

Yet people who use their welfare debit cards at casinos and cruise ships isn't a problem,unreal.

I can find tons of articles on welfare cheats, it is still a problem and it needs attention.

 

Wrong data, this is about eligibility fraud, only one of the many scams with welfare.

The crime i was referring to wasn't the fact the people were getting welfare fraudulently, it was what they were doing with the funds once they received them. Saying switching from stamps to debit cards changed that is false.

 

People who lied to qualify, not only lied, but provided forged documents. If you've ever gone on the dole, you would know that they make you prove your need.

Those who need the assistance cannot afford to take 50% for their food stamps.

Yea, it's also common knowledge that women can't do math, and Obama is a Muslim. I'm not saying that food stamps are not sold, just that the poor are not selling them to any appreciable extent, maybe trading them in some instances for other necessities.

One man's snide remark is another's perception. Macho bull shit doesn't impress me at all; and, I am just as expressive in person.

They are scamming the system, why not report them?

It's "common knowledge."

Instead of a "whatever," how about explaining what I got wrong.

Seems your reporter came to the same conclusion that I did.



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would they even be able to run a program like this and have it be cost effective? accurate drug testing methods can be pretty expensive.

 

This thread has morphed from being about drug testing assistance applicants to whether Welfare is abused or not. It is abused to an extent - but why put the onus on the needy by forcing them all to get drug test!!?? It is both cruel and degrading.

 

if a client has a substance abuse problem. I think its within the welfare systems rights to do so.

I certainly do know many people that will sell all their food stamps for drugs, and instantly use their cash assistance to buy drugs with every cent soon as the clock turns midnight..

 

And I have no problem with what Orison suggest. If there is evidence of abusing the system - test that sucker. It's all the innocents that concern me.

 

you are making quite a few big assumptions without backing them up.

 

If drug use is truly a threat to society then everyone should be tested. I don't feel that drug abuse is the author of harm. I have known a few on public assistance that are addicted to alcohol, for which they do not drug test. There are many in the workforce who take prescription drugs.

What is driving the inequities of this system in the first place is a cultural sickness of creating superstitious taboos which serve not to refine the culture but only to accuse different behavior. To those who would legislate, "moral", behavior, their only means of relating is suspicious at best to vicious at worst.
Mistrust and antagonism are built into the system.

Enforcement is antithetical to care.

 

Financially it is ludicrous.
Legally and politically it is a violation of a persons fourth amendment rights protecting them from an unwarranted and illegal search.
The violation of those constitutional rights is the reason it has failed in each instance it has been tried to be enacted. Blanket screening such as proposed would constitute such violation.
Specific screening with a verifiable suspicion/cause would stand a much better chance in terms of constitutional rights.

Another BIG problem is the same problem that plagues all drug screening. The more harmful and addictive substances have relatively short periods of elimination from the human body, where marijuana has the longest.
It has already been demonstrated in many court battles over work place screening that a positive result for marijuana gives absolutely no indication of the current state of intoxication of the test subject or the degree of use.
A person could ingest heroin on Friday night, cocaine on Saturday and drink themselves into a stupor on Sunday and piss clean by Tuesday.
They could smoke one joint on Friday night and test dirty for the next 2-4 weeks.
Also there is no provision for the testing of alcohol abuse, which is far more likely to be using up welfare dollars more than illicit substances simply by virtue of it's legal status and ease of access. A person doesn't need to trade anything to purchase a case of beer, they just can't directly purchase it with their food or cash EBT card. But that doesn't prevent them from just taking cash out of an ATM and purchasing alcohol.

So yet again it would result in skewed numbers and only really impact those who use marijuana and not other drug substances or alcohol.

Another very poorly researched and thought through proposal based on stereotypes, prejudice and innacurate information concerning drug use in America.

 

The article that cadcruzer posted already did that in the last sentence:

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The odd thing is that welfare (as it is sadly stereotyped) no longer exists. The days of unlimited health care, affordable housing, and "food stamps" for the poor - are a thing of the past.

That's why we have seen such a tremendous increase of homeless folks in America. So now let's subject the poor and disabled to routine drug tests. WTF is next? Will the rich ever be satisfied? I think not. Their greed is of a monstrous sort.

QP

P.S. Since it is obviously a crime to be poor in this affluent country - I think it is only fair that ALL American citizens be tested for drug use/abuse. To target the poor - is a shameless violation of one's civil rights - or is there really no such thing as: ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL? I suggest a piss test for all! No matter your ability and income! *sarcasm off*