Another Form of Drug Abuse

For a while back there, lots of conservatives got all worked up and had a Really Great Idea -- they would drug test all those freeloading welfare recipients who no doubt were all drug addicts because they're black and black people are all drug addicts and then we can kick them off the welfare rolls and get rid of welfare once and for all and save tons of money at the same time.

A few problems with that, of course.

One, all black people aren't drug addicts.  Another thing, all people on welfare aren't black -- some, maybe even many, maybe even most for all I know are God-fearing white folks.  And third...well, third -- well, okay, let Think Progress explain it in their headline.

The program for the Far Right is that he first-year results from Tennessee are in and...drug testing of welfare recipients found that the level of drug usage by all welfare recipients was less than 0.2%.

Just to be sure you read that right (because even Think Progress made a mistake when they first wrote the story and had to offer an updated correction later, having moved the decimal point over one place.  The correct number is less than zero point two percent.  0.2%.  To be clear, even 2% would have been incredibly low.  But this was ten times lower than even that, two-tenths of one percent.  0.2%.

This is a far smaller percentage, ten times less, than the number of people who supported Rick Perry (R-TX) for president...and he dropped out of the race.  It's a smaller percentage than people who support the candidacy of Jim Gilmore, and he almost doesn't even register on the scale.

But the results are even much worse for those on the Far Right who were pushing for drug testing of welfare recipients in order to humiliate them.  That's because the national average of drug use in the United States is 9.4%.  And this was 0.2%.  

For those not adept at math, 0.2% is a LOT lower than 9.4%.

​Let's put it this with -- if the number of Americans who used drugs was 0.2%...We Wouldn't Have a Drug Problem in the United States!!!

By the way, lest you think that this result is abnormal, another article here from Think Progress earlier in the year reported that there have been seven other states that implemented drug tests for welfare recipients, and all but one of them showed that drug use for welfare recipients was under 1%.  And in that one other state it was 8.3%, which is still under the national average.

And to save all that welfare money from the paltry handful of needy welfare recipients kicked off the rolls, the states spent over $1 million.

No word from the test results how many welfare recipients on a regular basis buy lobster