Welfare Reform in the US - Essay Example

Drug testing for welfare recipients would save money and effectively limit the number of drug abusers collecting money. Each year in the United States, approximately four hundred billion dollars is given to citizens in the form of welfare. The recipients are out of work or do not make enough money to live a healthy, albeit basic, lifestyle. The cash assistance given is used towards housing, bills and utilities, food, and clothing, and the primary focus is ensuring that any children involved are being taken care of.

Though many recipients use their money to make sure their families have food in their stomachs and a roof over their heads, roughly twenty percent of recipients use their government aid to fuel their illegal drug use. They may be in the same financial distress as others on welfare, but instead of using their government aid to improve the quality of their lives, they use it to make it increasingly worse. It has been proposed that people who apply for welfare should be drug tested before being allowed to receive cash assistance from the government.

By drug testing recipients, the government can weed out the people who have the potential to abuse the system by using their money on illegal substances. . It almost becomes a case of who is more deserving of government aid. However, a need for it has arisen. Drug testing potential welfare recipients can be monetarily beneficial for the government. If they stop supplying drug addicts with money, that money can be put to other state or national uses. The extra money can also be put towards other families that need financial assistance and will spend the money on necessities.

Another possible outcome that could come as a result of drug testing recipients is that by cutting drug abusers from a primary source of money, then the drug users will have less opportunity to obtain drugs. In the end, more money will exist for the people who sincerely need it to improve their lives, and increasingly less money will be available for the drug abusers to feed their addiction.