(VIDEO): Daily Show targets welfare drug-testing law
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Last night, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart aired a segment highlighting Florida’s welfare drug testing law.
The show featured interviews with state Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, and Luis Lebron, the Navy veteran who successfully sued the state over its law requiring welfare recipients to take a drug test prior to receiving benefits.
The segment also featured the show’s run-in with Gov. Rick Scott this past December. During the unveiling of his budget recommendations for the upcoming legislative session, Aasif Mandvi asked Scott to pee in a cup to prove he is not on drugs.
Although a judge halted the law, the Daily Show’s segment discussed the assumptions the law was making about poor people. The program also mentioned that the rate of people failing the drug test was lower than drug use in the general population and that the state had actually lost money in its implementation.
You can watch the whole segment here:
I must clarify again I did not say,It is clear that our cntioitutson – and common sense – would object to the random drug testing of this large group of people, making the drug testing of an equally absurd category of people – welfare recipients – uncntioitutsonal as well.U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Roberts did when the District Judge of Michigan overturned the same bill in her state in 1999. As such there is legal precedents to overturn this terrifying joke of a solution .And no, I don’t think that allowing convicted felons/parolees off of their parole mandated UAs because they have already been convicted of a crime and therefore, have lost that right against unreasonable searches and seizures. As far as people being drug tested for employment, there are plenty of places that don’t drug test and frankly, pre-employee drug screens can be cheated all the time. Most places who do drug test, they state their intent to do so while a potential employee is filling out the application or viewing the job posting online. I do agree that we need to come to a place of requiring people to live responsible lives again! But I disagree on this methodology of doing so. How is kicking users off of welfare going to cause them to live responsible. True addicts have a serious problem and not being able to spend taxpayer money on drugs isn’t going to solve that problem.Also, I resent the fact that I am being told that I am ignoring the taxpayer. I AM A TAXPAYER and I feel that I am being ignored when I am told that I must forfeit my rights in order to ask my government for help that should be there when I need it. I would also feel ignored if my state spent MY MONEY on drug testing people without alternative thought or idea to the case but thankfully, I don’t foresee that being an issue since my state can already lawfully drug test recipients of cash assistance with probable cause.Reply
The reason they ask you about any over the cnoetur drugs you have taken in the past 72 hours is to see if you will have any false positives for recreational drugs. Every drug has its own time period that it is detectable for, most drugs are 2 to 4 days, marijuana can be up to 30 days but that is only with heavy use. If you smoked weed only once a week before, then you will most likely pass the test. If you were a habitual smoker for the past month before that though, then you run a good chance of failing it, if so get a system cleaner. If you are a smaller person with a high metabolism it will get out of your system a lot faster. If you are really worried I would recommend you start exercising and drinking a lot of water and tea until you have to take the test. School tests are known to be very cheap and inaccurate though and I knew someone who had to take tests at school and was a drug user, and would simply dilute their urine with 90% water from the bathroom sink and the school never noticed the tampering because they used a cheap enough test.
