Michigan's Effort To Drug Test Welfare Recipients Catches Zero Bad Actors
For a year, Michigan tried to find out how many of its welfare recipients were abusing drugs. A pilot program’s tally? Zero.
One person in the study of 443 recipients did test positive but then was removed from the program for “unrelated reasons,” according to a report by the Michigan Department for Health and Human Services.
The MDHHS created the Substance Use Disorder Pilot in three counties after the Michigan Legislature passed a law requiring the department to implement suspicion-based drug testing for cash assistance recipients. This means only people who indicated they used drugs on a questionnaire could be subjected to testing. Conservatives have supported large-scale drug testing of all U.S. welfare recipients in the past, but an earlier attempt at wholesale testing was ruled illegal in Michigan in 2000.
The pilot suggested that substance abuse was not prevalent among recipients of government benefits. Of the pool of 443 potential candidates for the program, only 27 were identified as possible substance abusers. Ten of the 27 had already been enrolled in some type of counseling for drug use, exempting them from being tested. Of the remaining 17, only one positive test was reported, but it was then dismissed — meaning the program did not catch a single person in violation of the policy.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/michigans-effort-to-drug-test-welfare-recipients-catches-zero-bad-actors/ar-AAl1IqG?li=BBnb7Kz
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