Recently, in September 2012, the State of Florida had put into law that welfare recipients in that state take a drug test. Unsure of the frequency, as those who receive welfare and when the time comes, they would have to stay clean or you can see an increase of sales of products claiming that it will instantly clean the drugs out of yourself, becoming undetected. So far, the law is noted as problematic, stating that the tests will be costly, pending on the frequency itself. The question is are the taxpayers willing to pay?
Florida, at the least, will be the experiment to those other states willing to do the same, but they wait for sample data, seeing if it will be problematic. It’s a start to combat the welfare abuse we have in our country. I heard stories of some recipients who buy food with the Bridge Card and selling the food for cash to buy drugs or other personal items, when they need to feed their children. And recently, Red Bull is now being EBT approved, I can see me going to a downtown festival with a pushy man saying, “Buy some of my Red Bull, fifty cents apiece.”
Welfare abuse is causing our tax dollars to go to places where it perhaps shouldn’t be going. And, with that being said, it can be one of the big contributions on why the middle-class is having trouble. Just go under Google News and type middle class, there are plenty of articles to boot about how it is shrinking. It always has been the story that the middle class pays a high percentage of taxes over both the higher class and the lower class. The news from these recent articles are stating that the high class are doing better than they were ten years ago, and the lower-class are also increasing in their favor. It’s not to say that all lower-class people are welfare recipients who are abusing the system, I’m not saying that and you can calm down, don’t need to click on that ‘send feedback to writer’ and shout my name in anger in capital letters. But, it just seems to me that welfare abuse is a contributing factor. The majority of taxpayers would like welfare recipients to be drug tested, myself included. I don’t want for people to take from my paycheck, buy food from the store then sell it, and head down to the crack house to buy some drugs. If you are going to do drugs, don’t do it on my dime.
Going back to the Florida issue, there is a lot of fuss and anger over the system, as it just started. To add to that, according to news reports, the state of Florida has bitten off more than it could chew, as nearly a million dollars has been paid back to recipients in which the drug tests showed wrong results, and for those who even refused. So far, the Florida experiment isn’t starting out too well. It will be up to what the federal and local governments wish to do to improve the system, and learn from what the Florida experiment failed to do.