Seems like a good idea, right? Let's make sure we're not doling out cash to people so they can buy meth and cocaine. Seems to make sense to me. That is until you do some actual thinking, rather than knee-jerk emotional reaction logic.
Let's start with cost. It has repeatedly been shown that drug testing is expensive. On average, a single test costs $42 per sample. That is exclusive of the personnel cost to administer, records management, verifying positives (to reduce false positives), and cross-referencing to "legitimate" prescriptions and legal substances (poppy seeds) on an individual, case-by-case basis. Detecting illegal drug use is an expensive operation, no doubt. There were 2.5 million welfare recipients in Michigan in 2011. A little math and this is insanely expensive (and consequently lucrative to test providers).
But look on the bright side, it would certainly create a hell of a lot of jobs.
Oh, but we'll save a ton of money by cutting off all those druggies, right? Surely that should pay for the administration and related costs of testing.
So how much would we save in welfare payments? The average welfare cash assistance is around $900 for a family of 4 plus another $500 in food stamps per month. So figure (high) an average of $1,500 per month per potential druggie. Studies have shown that there is no statistically significant difference in drug use between welfare recipients and the general population, which runs around 3%. Taking our Michigan example, that means we could cut off 75,000 druggies from their welfare payments (presumably so they can be forced to beg or steal in order to eat). That would save a whopping $112,500,000 per month.
Monthly testing should only cost about $1,500,000,000 per month (based on the lower "per incident" cost of two studies, one in the private sector, one by a congressional committee)
What a deal! Government at it's finest. Spend $1.5b to save $0.112b.
Shall I go on?
