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Drug testing the jobless

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is hot on a new idea. She wants to drug test the jobless to make sure they are suitable candidates to receive unemployment benefits.

According to the National Employment Law Project (NELP),a worker advocacy group, no state has ever instituted a mandatory program of drug tests for the jobless in regard to receiving unemployment benefits, but Mrs. Haley would like to change that, at least in the State of South Carolina.

“Down on the River Site [a nuclear reservation along the Savannah River], they were hiring a few hundred people, and when we sat down and talked with them—this was before the campaign—when we sat down and talked with them, they said of everyone they interviewed, half of them failed a drug test, and of the half that was left, of that 50%, the other half couldn’t read or write properly.”

We’ll forego a discussion of Mrs. Haley’s own English syntax in the above.

“That’s the problem we have in South Carolina,” Mrs. Haley continued. “We don’t have an unemployment problem. We have an education and poverty problem.”

One can seriously question the efficacy of drug testing to solve either of those problems, however. Drug testing can only be seen as an enforced pre-punishment for the unemployed. As a means of limiting those allowed benefits, drug testing can be viewed as a simple violation of Fourth Amendment rights or as a cudgel to intimidate and scare off qualified candidates—in short, a way to save the state some money. Drug testing can also be viewed as a way to wage class warfare while burdening an otherwise overstretched bureaucracy.

“The process of referring claimants to drug tests would delay timely delivery of benefits required by federal law,” said NELP senior staff attorney George Wentworth. “Administration of state unemployment insurance laws is federally funded but the federal government will only subsidize reasonable administrative costs.”

So it’s up to each state to decide about whatever draconian measures are needed to punish the powerless. Florida Governor Rick Scott recently required welfare applicants to pay for their own drug tests earlier this year. Only 2% of welfare applicants flunked the test, but one wonders how many didn’t bother even applying, drunk, sober, or otherwise.

Ohio State Senator Tim Grendell says he plans to introduce legislation to require drug testing modeled specifically on Scott’s law. “Hard-working taxpayers of the State of Ohio should not have to pay for the drug habits of ‘illegal drug users.’” I guess one might suspect those out
of work are strung out on something, or building meth labs to bring in some income during these hard times.

If we, as a society, are to enforce mandatory drug testing on the poor and the unemployed, it’s only fair that we should make those seeking high office submit to the tests as well. How about it, Mrs. Haley? Are you willing to pay for your own drug testing prior to your bid for re-election?

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