Some important notes about drug testing for welfare. The biggest point is this first paragraph. One need read nothing more. The other two paragraphs are just additional things to consider when stating one’s position on drug testing.

Florida ran two sets of drug testing trials, one small as a proof of concept, and the other much larger in scope. In both cases, the cost of testing far exceeded the cost of the benefits denied to the less than 2% of people that failed. There was also no statistically significant change in the number of applicants, which suggests that it wasn’t discouraging people who did drugs from applying. From this, one can state with certainty that it is economically ill advised to drug test welfare applicants.

If someone fails a test for cannabis or for opiates, it may be the case that they’re using the materials to make their lives easier. [WARNING, ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE AHEAD] I have some relatives who, for the sake of pain relief, opt for cannabis over opiates because (1)the pain relieving effect is greater, (2)the psychological impairment is less significant when compared to opiates, and (3)the rate of tolerance is higher for opiates. They’re not on welfare, but I offer this information to indicate that doing drugs doesn’t automatically make one incapable as a worker. It could be the case that someone is consuming drugs to make it possible to work, not that they’re using their benefits on drugs (which, because of safeguards in the system, is unlikely). The implicit assumption that drugs == bad worker is a fallacy of false equivocation.

A surprising number [citation needed | exact numbers needed] of people using social welfare are already employed, but are either at less-than-subsistence level, or require additional assistance. The average benefits allocated on a month-to-month basis is less than $300 for a family. Welfare isn’t just EBT/FoodStamps. Welfare includes child services, health care, and a wide variety of other options. A child should never go hungry because a parent failed a drug test. [WARNING, APPEAL TO EMOTION]

If something above is inaccurate, please let me know.

SMBC is a long standing favorite for me. I jumped at the opportunity to purchase “Save Yourself, Mammal!” when I heard it was headed to print. The humor is consistently outstanding, and there were several comics which had me in tears. My biggest lamentation is that the collection is a bit sparse for my tastes. Having come from the full 2000+ collection of online comics, I was disappointed to discover so few were included in this publication. That said, I believe it’s a better assortment than that present in the second book: The Most Dangerous Game. Hopefully we will see someday the full SMBC anthology, which I believe should be named, “The Gigantic Weiner Book.” Perhaps someday a person will come along and scrape the SMBC site and compile the entire collection into something readable on the kindle. Until then, I recommend picking up his books:

Save Yourself, Mammal!
The Most Dangerous Game