Drug testing of Florida's welfare recipients

Isn't it fun arguing with Liberals?  Refute them with facts and watch their heads explode, spewing out Communist/Socialist propaganda.

I've recently re-posted on Facebook a picture of the following text:
Thank you Florida, Kentucky, and Missouri, which are the first States that will require drug test when applying for welfare.  Some people are crying and calling this unconstitutional.  How is this unconstitutional??? It's OK to drug test people who work for their money, but not for those who don't?... Re-post this if you'd like to see this done in all 50 states.  If you can afford to buy drugs and extra illegal things then you can afford your own groceries.


The above was then re-posted by a friend and what follows is an exchange between one of his liberal friends and me.

lib: The stats on welfare recipients who test positive show it is very, very few. In FL, 7% of the general public uses (http://oas.samhsa.gov/2k7State/Ch2.htm#Fig2-1) but only 2% of tested welfare recipients. The cost/benefit analysis doesn't support this practice - which, let's be honest, is just a scapegoat. With this logic, every citizen who benefits from tax money should be tested - anyone who uses a public road, city park, attends a school, uses tap water, etc.


me: Where do you see that 2% of welfare recipients tested positive?


lib: The state lost tens of thousands of dollars testing. Ironic that the force behind wanting these tests are people who claim they want less govt waste. I'm not a fan of drug use. I'm a fan of pragmatism. http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/20/2758871/floridas-welfare-drug-tests-cost.html


me: 108 of the 4,086 people who took a drug test failed.
Florida had 87,632 welfare recipients in 2008 and 74,994 in 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/25/us/20090126-welfare-table.html

lib: I don't care of 100% of those who took a drug test failed. Everyone benefits from taxes spent and if there's moralizing to be done, apply the test to everyone and then take away their access to roads, libraries, clean water, plumbing, education, swingsets, etc. Sounds like a farce to me but people need their scapegoats, I guess. Personally, I think there are far more pressing issues and waste to tackle.

The pathetic thing is that if you google welfare and Florida, google is flooded with news posts about these 4,086.  Now anyone with a brain would find that number to be extremely strange considering Florida's population and the recent collapse of Florida's real estate and construction industry.  Unless you're a liberal that is, then only the percent matters, not the sample size.  A few sources did indicate that several thousand people chose to drop out rather than be tested.  Now the real question is what would happen if all the 90+ thousand people were tested instead of a small sample and without allowing people to refuse.

The real entertaining part was her last comment.  Now while I'm for legalizing marijuana, I'm for having it taxed same as alcohol and cigarettes and having it raise money for the government.  What I'm not for is higher taxes due to fraud and unchecked spending.  Everyone benefits from taxes spent?  How about not burning hard working people's money and instead lowering taxes?  Apply the test to everyone? It already is applied to a lot of government employees.  Take away access to roads?  Already being done.  Though the point liberals/communists/socialist don't seem to get is the difference between using your own money to buy drugs and using someone else's money.  And it's not only the tax payers' money they're misusing.  They're taking money away from people who are on welfare because of need and they're taking money away from other government programs.