With Drug Testing Welfare Recipients, Annoying Chain-Letter Emails Make it to Jefferson City

There are far too many problems with Missouri’s State Government, and being “too large” is not one of them. While most of our representatives and senators appear to be human with all of the potential that humanity entails, they appear to refuse to take advantage of the benefits of data-driven decision-making.  

Part of the problem is that they are not paid enough.  Seriously, I’m not kidding. Yes, it’s $35,000 a year for five months in Jefferson City, but ask yourself, “is my boss going to let me take off five months of the year to make bad laws too?" If you are not already independently wealthy, retired, or industry-endorsed, what you have left is someone who makes less money than an entry-level night shift manager at QuikTrip.  No Joke.

It’s like so many other things in life…you get what you pay for.

The latest nonsense chain-letter email to make it to Jefferson City is the one requiring drug testing to receive welfare.  Sure.  It sounds good on the surface.  Who wants to use hard-earned taxpayer money to support someone’s drug habit?  I sure don’t.  

The problem with this embarrassing excuse for a law is that it is not a real problem, and for the few that it is, it’s akin to spanking a toddler for wetting his diaper.

Some Local Intelligence

Two quick points; according to Pat Dougherty, representing the Catholic Charities of Archdiocese of St. Louis on KMOX, “This bill targets low-income individuals, particularly women with children…We have women who come to our program and who are successful, who are getting their lives back together, who are trying to get straight, and yet, you’ve got a penalty there.”

In the same program, Sen. Maria Chapelle-Nadal said, “In Florida, they did about 9,000 tests and spent more than $3 million, while only 36 people were convicted.”  The article goes on to say that Missouri’s legislative staff estimates the drug testing costs at $2.3 million.

A Data-Driven Study

What about fixing a problem that doesn’t need fixing, or at the very least, trying to hammer a tack-nail with a wrecking ball?

If Jefferson City is interesting in tightening up the welfare system instead of contributing to it, there was a data-driven study done on the matter by the University of Michigan and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Charles Mott Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and others.  The title of their findings is, “Drug Testing Welfare Recipients – False Positives, False Negatives, Unintended Opportunities.”

In short, “Our results confirm and update earlier findings that psychiatric disorders are much more prevalent than illicit drug dependence…This suggests that screening welfare applicants and recipients for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other psychiatric disorders would detect many problems likely to hinder the transition from welfare to work.”

It goes on to say, “The benefits of drug testing must be weighed against the potential mis-allocation of treatment resources to occasional users…,” and finishes with, “In the vocabulary of our paper, chemical testing of all welfare recipients will detect some “true positives,” a greater number of “accidental positives” with complex problems, and a larger group of “false positives” who have no apparent psychiatric (including drug-related) disorder.”

The bottom line

Wishing for a more intelligent Jefferson City is probably a fruitless endeavor, but we could at least encourage them to leave their chain-letter emails at home.