Originally Posted by Rexanglorum
You guys do realize the perverse incentive created by such a law? It should be called the "trade in marijuana for crack, meth and heroin act." THC stays in a person's system for weeks while cocaine and opiates and methamphetamine will usually be out of an addict's system within days. This encourages someone who might have only smoked marijuana to take up stronger, more dagerous and more addictive drugs.
Will the CEO's of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, AIG and Goldman Sachs and every other bailed out firm be willing to piss in a cup on demand. They are all welfare recipients after all.
Will tobacco, caffeine and alcohol be on that list of banned substances? (does anyone else find it ironic that the OP and the person who is so gung ho about this law counts "beer" among his trinity of good things in life. Beer is, despite all of the history, mystique and marketing surrounding it, a mind altering substance).
The definition of "recipient of government benefits" is very elastic. I understand the underlying logic of drug testing people who receive tax payer to beneficiary payments. However, as Senator Orrin Hatch proposed, everyone who gets Unemployment benefits should be drugs tested. In theory at least, those benefits are a form of insurance and not welfare payments as is social security and medicare and workers' compensation. Should we test anyone in those programs. What about any whose mortgage was bundled and sold to a GSE? What about any who every drives on government funded roads.
Finally, I hope that you younger people here take a lesson from this. Big government means less privacy for you. The more benefits that you get from the public treasury, the more they attach strings to those benefits and one day a "free" man might be treated about the same as an inmate in a penitentiary today.