glass houses

Florida is going to force all welfare recipients to undergo drug testing, before receiving benefits, ostensibly so they can’t use their welfare benefits to buy drugs and to save the hard-earned money of those good, law-abiding Florida residents, including those that bet at jai alai,  the greyhound tracks and fill their prescriptions for oxy, vicodin and percoset — over and over and over again.  Are Floridians worried about enabling addictions, specifically those of lazy no-good drug addicts?  Are they testing sex addicts, porn addicts, shopping addicts, alcoholics, members of NAMBLA?  Welfare checks can fuel all of these addictions and many, many more.  Addiction is a disease, an illness — no one chooses to be an addict, just as no one chooses to have cancer.  So why are we denying addicts welfare benefits but not cancer victims?  We know that those suffering from cancer are desperate enough to spend their $$ on any treatment at all, no matter how hare-brained.  We know that cancer sufferers are prone to using an inordinate amount of pain killers — and god damn it, some of them don’t even go to work!   Why are we targeting one illness — addiction to drugs, but not any others — not even any other addictions?  And who’s paying for the drug testing?  Has anyone given any thought to how much that will cost — supervised drug tests (I’m assuming they need to supervised and by same-sex observers because all sorts of shenanigans can go on in those testing rooms), transport to labs, lab analyses, delivering results and of course, counseling for those who will not be receiving welfare checks.  What of the false positives and false negatives?  Some will slip though the cracks on both ends of the spectrum.  Who tells the five kids of a single mom who left her abusive husband that they will go hungry because a pee test came back wrong?  If that isn’t a case for taking a toke, I don’t know what is.