Arguments Against Welfare Drug Testing

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The first welfare program was started during the Great Depression, to help relieve the suffering people, as a part of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” (Issues & Controversies). Welfare is government assistance provided to people that need help affording to live. Food stamps, healthcare, and unemployment benefits are only a few forms of welfare. Taxes get taken out of working American’s paychecks to provide these benefits to the poor. In Issues & Controversies article “Welfare Drug Testing: Should the government require that welfare recipients take drug tests?” the two sides of the argument are given. Most people oppose to the recipients being drug tested. Issues & Controversies states, “Welfare drug-testing efforts have faced legal challenges from recipients who argue that such tests violate the Fourth Amendment to …show more content…
Issues & Controversies points out, “Granting financial assistance to poor individuals with drug addictions, proponents contend, does little to actually help them,” instead drug testing can get the person(s) help with the addiction. It is unfair to taxpayers that do work, and can barely afford everything they have, to know they could be giving the money they earned to people that spend it on drugs (Issues & Controversies). I do believe that the article “Kick Junkies Off Welfare” is much better at explaining the law that takes the supporters side by stating, “These state crackdown efforts are sanctioned by federal law. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, better known as the welfare-reform law, provided that states could “test welfare recipients for use of controlled substances” and sanction those who tested positive.” Furthermore, drug testing welfare recipients should be considered because it could help addicts get clean, save taxpayers from worrying about wasting their money, and technically it is a law that they can be drug