Pubdate: Thu, 26 Jan 2012
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2012 The Dallas Morning News, Inc.
Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/cgi-bin/lettertoed.cgi
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: F. Scott McCown
Note: F. Scott McCown is a retired state district judge and executive 
director of the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities.

THE PLOY BEHIND DRUG TESTING THE UNEMPLOYED

As part of legislation to extend federal unemployment insurance 
benefits through 2012, Congress is considering a very bad policy idea: 
encouraging states to drug test every applicant for unemployment 
insurance and deny compensation to any who fail. It's such a bad idea 
that it has twice failed to make it through the Texas House, which is 
as conservative a legislative body as they come.

The whole thing is really a ploy. The proponents of drug testing are 
trying to undermine public support for unemployment benefits by 
associating these applicants with drug users. They want the public to 
think about unemployment insurance like it does welfare, blaming the 
unemployed - rather than the economy - for their plight.

Unemployment insurance is not welfare. By definition, people who 
qualify lost their job through no fault of their own. They are 
typically men and women who have worked steadily, often for years or 
even decades, and have largely covered the cost of their employer's 
unemployment-insurance tax indirectly through reduced wages.

Congress should not subject these workers to the indignity of drug 
testing. Federal courts have squarely held that mandatory drug testing 
in situations of this sort violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition 
against unreasonable search and seizures because there is no 
individualized suspicion of wrongdoing or special need that outweighs 
a person's right to keep the government off his back and out of his business.

The personal invasion goes beyond having to pee in a cup. The worker 
also would have to disclose to the government all the medications he 
or she takes to explain any false positive. And there will be many 
false positives, subjecting people to searching government inquires in 
their effort to clear their name.

Not only is drug testing intrusive, it is expensive. States would have 
to create a new bureaucracy and pay significant lab costs to test 
every applicant. New claims for unemployment insurance nationally 
average about 400,000 a week. Weeding out the false positives will be 
particularly costly. At a time when states are struggling to fund 
vital services such as public education, Congress should not encourage 
them to waste money on such drug testing.

Drug issues should be dealt with in the criminal justice or social 
services systems, not the unemployment insurance system. Of course, as 
I already said, this debate isn't really about drug policy; it's about 
undermining public support for unemployment insurance.

But let's talk drug policy.

Unemployment insurance is designed to pay for a family's food, 
clothing and shelter while the breadwinner looks for a new job. What 
if your brother-in-law foolishly smokes pot but also works steadily to 
support your sister and their children? If he loses his job because of 
the economy, do you really think it's smart to deny his family those 
unemployment benefits, forcing them onto welfare or leaving them destitute?

To automatically deny these benefits when an unemployed worker fails a 
drug test is like imposing a massive, mandatory fine for drug use 
without any of the discretion or treatment provided by our criminal 
justice and social services systems. Such a penalty is both too harsh 
and counterproductive.

Admittedly, Congress is merely considering giving states an option to 
drug test applicants. But this is the beautiful part of the ploy. 
Congress would take none of the responsibility while igniting debates 
in the 50 states. 

Frankly, how Congress ultimately comes down on this issue is sort of a 
test itself. Congress says its top priority is the American worker. 
But if Congress encourages states to subject American workers to 
unnecessary, intrusive, expensive and ill-advised drug tests, it is 
proof positive that for Congress, the American worker really doesn't 
count for much.
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MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.