http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/9/1482361/-Tennessee-s-welfare-drug-testing-program-is-wasting-money-and-not-finding-anybody-on-drugs?detail=email
Back in October, statistics were released by Tennessee on the results of a year’s worth of their war-on-the-poor drug-testing welfare applicants program. Those results were pathetic.
What isn’t in dispute is that of the 28,559 individuals making application for Tennessee’s Families First benefits in the program’s first year (July 1, 2014 to July 1, 2015) 468 applicants were drug tested. A total of 55 individuals failed the test and so were denied benefits.
Of the 55 who failed a drug test, some agreed to begin drug treatment and eventually received the denied benefits. Other families had benefits granted through a different family member or guardian. The exact number of Tennesseans who never received requested benefits is hard to pinpoint but appears to number less than 30 families.
Well, that was way back in October, in the year of our Lord— two thousand and fifteen. We were so much younger then. The skin on my face was so tight skin back then! What’s new, Tennessee?
Out of 39,121 people who have applied for Families First in Tennessee benefits since the state instituted drug tests in mid-2014, just 65 have tested positive for narcotics. Only 609 of those applicants have even been asked to pee in a cup, because so few applicants give responses to a drug questionnaire that trigger urine tests.
The positive test results amount to a 10.7 percent drug use rate among those tested, and the number of tests ordered amounts to just 1.6 percent of the total applicant pool. If the state’s drug screening questionnaire is as effective at gauging risk as the state thinks it is, then its two-layered testing system has revealed that just 0.2 percent of welfare applicants can’t pass a drug test.
Almost 10,000 more people applied and TEN MORE PEOPLE BUSTED! Yay! It only costs a few $1000 dollars to hurt thousands of people, Tennessee. The Republican Party is really becoming fiscally conservative when it comes to squeezing the blood out the those in need—also known as wasting money.they keep trying to find ways to apply the misinformation they put out to demonize let's say those of color and the collateral poor Whites they created the drug scare decades ago they use it to incarcerate they use it to deny infrastructure improvements they use it to deny social nets in short they use it to totally disenfranchise those they target from society which also they use as a reason to deny the worthiness to basically America.
