Should Utah Drug Test Welfare Recipients?

Mar 25, 2008 by Elizabeth Ziegler

(KCPW News) Addicts who receive welfare checks could be spending taxpayer money on illegal drugs. This prospect troubles one of Senator Dennis Stowell's constituents, who urged the Southern Utah Republican to ask the legislature to consider the random drug testing of welfare recipients.

"I guess the question becomes, if you find that a welfare recipient is taking drugs, you've got to figure out what you'll do," Stowell says. "With an employee you terminate them."'

But terminating payments to drug-using welfare recipients may not be appropriate, Stowell says. That is why a study is needed, he says. Advocates for low-income Utahns, such as Karen Silver from the Salt Lake Community Action Program, say penalizing drug-using welfare recipients could seriously harm Utah's poor families. It would at the very least add an additional hurdle for welfare applicants, she says. And at worst, Silver says it could increase the number of homeless. Instead of studying whether to drug test welfare recipients, she says the legislature should study whether to spend more money on substance abuse programs.

"I would really like to believe that they want to study this with the interest of helping people and assessing the need for more public substance abuse treatment programs and more money into substance abuse help," Silver says. "But having the experience I have with the state legislature, I really don't think that's their agenda."

In fact, Representative Carol Spackman-Moss is requesting just such a proposal. The Holladay Democrat is asking for an interim study of how to increase the availability of substance abuse and mental health treatment programs. Legislative management meets tomorrow to assign the 235 interim study items to interim committees.

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