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Debate Info

23
32
Yes NO
Debate Score:55
Arguments:55
Total Votes:57
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Argument Ratio

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 Yes (18)
 
 NO (27)

Debate Creator

ethanevans99(11) pic



Should wellfare recipients have to be drug tested?

Many wellfare users sell the food they get for drugs.  If you want need help with food you shouldn't have money for drugs.  Also, some drug users would might get off drugs to get wellfare.

Yes

Side Score: 23
VS.

NO

Side Score: 32

It would definitely take care of the whole "People use welfare money for drugs!" issue.

Side: Yes
ProLogos(2793) Disputed
1 point

Why is it an issue?

Side: NO
1 point

I don't think its that big of a deal. Most republicans seem to think so though. I'm just sick and tired of them whining and bitching. I do however want people who are on welfare to find a job and not live off the government forever.

Side: Yes
1 point

Are you kidding me? Do you know how easy it is to pass a drug test when one knows it is coming?

This has been tried. Whatever the actual percentage of welfare recipients who have used drugs actually is, the number of people excluded from welfare programs due to testing positive represents a tiny, tiny minority. In every state that has tried it, more money has been spent on the testing program by FAR than was saved in denied benefits.

This kind of things might give people the warm fuzzies, but it is ineffective at what it sets out to do, and costs more money than it saves.

Side: NO
1 point

Wow. If the cost/benefit really fits, I gotta switch positions.

Side: NO

Why not? Why not make stricter laws for people receiving government benefits. Do people realize that if more than 50% of the country begins receiving welfare from the government, our system will collapse. Look that was happened in Greece. 60% of the country was receiving welfare-it's simple math. more money coming out of the government than is going into it. what is the latest number? something like 40 percent of Americans receiving some sort of government assistance? We are close to the threshold.

Side: Yes
ProLogos(2793) Disputed
1 point

Because not everyone wants to waste their life working.

It's their bodies and they should be able to do what they want with it.

Side: NO
Thewayitis(4071) Disputed
1 point

It is just your generation that considers work to be a waste and it is this generation that thinks welfare is an entitlement.

Secondly: In society when you want something, you have to earn it. One should do something to earn welfare and one thing someone can do that is on welfare is to obey the law/comply to accepted work practices.

Thirdly: Your body is not your own to do whatever you want to do with it. The reason there are laws against suicide.

Side: Yes
Jace(5222) Disputed
1 point

Primarily because stricter laws surrounding substance abuse have repeatedly demonstrated their inefficacy. The entire "war on drugs" was an utter failure. Penalizing addiction is not an effective deterrent.

Regarding welfare, you are confusing a symptom for a problem. Greece did not collapse because 60% of its population was receiving welfare. 60% of the population of Greece was on welfare because the national economy was incapable of supporting enough jobs at living wage. It is worth noting that while welfare rates in Greece were symptomatic of underlying economic problems, a high welfare rate does not inherently signal economic instability (i.e. some nations aggregate their financial base through higher taxation and redistribute it more equitably, proportioning welfare expenditures according to tax and other revenue). I do not think that this is the case in the U.S. at present; our economic model is unstable and unsustainable at present and the prevalence of what is actually a rather ineffectual welfare system is symptomatic of that.

Side: NO

They should be drug test just because they applied for welfare. If one wants assistants, one should actually need it and not just want it. Let welfare be an example as to what it takes to be a responsible citizen. Employers require drug test and so how can someone on welfare taking drugs get off welfare. One has to be free of drugs and this is one step in the weaning process.

Side: Yes
ProLogos(2793) Disputed
1 point

They should be drug test just because they applied for welfare.

Why?

If one wants assistants, one should actually need it and not just want it.

What does this have to do with buying drugs with welfare?

Let welfare be an example as to what it takes to be a responsible citizen.

Why?

Employers require drug test and so how can someone on welfare taking drugs get off welfare.

Because drugs affect the efficiency of workers in an unpredictable way.

So it isn't the same situation.

One has to be free of drugs

Why?

Side: NO
1 point

Tested YES, but indirectly. Welfare must be tied to work in order to be of any benefit to the recipient as well as society as a whole. Any employer who cares about their employees and their business does routine random drug testing. If the welfare recipient then chooses to by drugs, at least they earned the money.

Side: Yes
Jace(5222) Disputed
1 point

I have been employed in multiple sectors, and never once have I been asked or required to undergo drug testing. Some of these employers treated me quite well, and ran very successful businesses. I challenge you to provide any evidence actually supporting your claim of this causal relationship.

Side: NO
Thewayitis(4071) Disputed
1 point

I don't know how you could have been employed in multiple sectors and never had a drug test. All major companies at least in Ohio make you take a mandatory drug test. I'm guess that the fast food industry will hire anybody and hence the reason you have never had to take a drug test.

Side: Yes
daver(1771) Disputed
1 point

I'll provide evidence by showing the cause and effect logic supporting my argument.

It is known that in a given population of employees, statistically some will use drugs. It is know that drugs can impair mental and physical performance of employees making them unreliable on the job. It is known that employers prefer reliable employees.

Employers will attempt to employ reliable employees AND random drug testing may detect employees who are using drugs SO employers use random drug testing to identify employees using drugs.

Please challenge this logic if you see any invalid causality connections.

Side: Yes
1 point

Welfare should definitely require drug tests. We should even have welfare to begin with.

Side: Yes
4 points

Unilateral drug-testing of welfare recipients is a presumption of individual guilt on the basis of a tenuous generalization. Even if the assertion were not a huge fallacy riding on the back of an even larger assumption, drug testing would not be the solution. Poverty is one of multiple risk variables for substance abuse; further exacerbating financial insecurity by penalizing those with existing substance issues is not going to ameliorate that risk and it will likely drive potential recipients away from obtaining benefits on the premise of conscientious objection.

The welfare debate itself is entirely misdirected. The rising prevalence of welfare is not the problem, it is one of many symptoms pointing to a deteriorating economic system.

Side: NO
2 points

Many wellfare users sell the food they get for drugs

Seriously..what sort of drug dealer accepts food for drugs? "Pssttt.. I'll give you a slice of this homemade steak and ale pie if you give us a couple of ounce of weed".

Side: NO
Hellno(17753) Disputed
2 points

Uhhhhhh...... they sell the food stamps for cash to buy drugs.

Side: Yes
ProLogos(2793) Disputed
1 point

They don't give out foot stamps anymore.

Side: NO
ethanevans99(11) Disputed
1 point

Thats not what they do. They sell their food to other people for cheap and then they go and buy drugs with it

Side: Yes
1 point

Some people get more than enough welfare.

It would be a waste to not spend it on something else.

Besides look at it this way, the government is paying for the recipient's drugs, which means the drugs are legal.

Side: NO

It doesn't take up enough of the budget that we should give that much of a shit on what they do with the money.

Side: NO
1 point

Absolutely not. For one, if drug users are covering the cost of their habits with money taken in from social assistance, then that is money they do not have to find elsewhere (i.e. illegally: theft, prostitution, and the many, many other ways junkies have of finding money (they are quite ingenious people, with the right stimulation)).

On top of this, it is quite a generalization to subject everybody who is down on their luck to this sort of treatment; people who are in need may fear to ask for help out of a belief they will be persecuted for having, say, taken a toke in the previous month, or for having eaten a poppy-seed bagel for breakfast that morning. Gluttonous alcoholics can, however, get around this quite easily, considering that drug tests do not incorporate alcohol in their screens. I am sure most thinking people are very understanding of the great distance that separates the healthfulness of marijuana (or even, I would argue, morphine and certain other drugs) from the common and commonly accepted, yet extremely damaging effects of alcohol and tobacco: physically, societally, and mentally.

Instead of treating all people in need of social assistance as criminals, as sub-human from those who tend to be better-off financially (thanks to a variety of reasons typically outside of their control, such as genetic & environmental factors, as well as inheritances and other familial claims on wealth which the poor very typically lack), effort should be put into lifting up these people from the gutter of their life's circumstances, and they should be given the tools with which they can make their life better.

Side: NO
1 point

I don't like the idea that people are using welfare for drugs. But drug testing will be very inefficient because heroin and meth doesn't take much to get out of our system. Florida once tried this, and it was a mistake. They actually spent more money instead of saving. (If the welfare recipient tested negative for the drug test, then the government would of paid for the drug test). If they tested positive they would no longer be allowed to receive welfare. ONLY 2.6% tested positive. So they spent way more money.

Side: NO
1 point

The government spends money on transportation infrastructure. Everyone who uses this infrastructure should have to submit to searches of their persons and effects, because some people use the infrastructure to transport drugs.

^ This argument makes the same amount of sense as the notion that those receiving welfare should have to submit to drug testing (which is to say, it does not make sense). The premise in both is that because a few people are guilty of a crime this warrants categorical revocation of everyone's Fourth Amendment rights. A presumption of guilt supplants the Constitutional mandate for the assumption of innocence, and the legal standards of probable cause and reasonable suspicion are rendered ineffectual.

Side: NO

I don't think welfare recipients should be tested for drugs. It would be a waste of the taxpayers' money.

Side: NO