State Senator and Lieutenant Governor Candidate Billy Hewes wants to implement drug testing for everyone receiving government assistance.
Mississippi State Senator Billy Hewes would have everyone receiving public assistance pass a drug test if he had his way. On the surface not giving public money to feed someone’s drug addiction sounds good. Hewes makes a strong case when he says, “if you have to get drug tested for a job, shouldn’t you have to be drug tested for government checks?” In practice however, mass drug testing had serious social repercussions. If Hewes had his way, Mississippi would join Florida and Missouri in requiring drug testing.
The idea of the helpless drug addict on a dirty mattress in a government housing block is a powerful image. No sane person would want to encourage this behavior and we should all work to help people with dangerous addictions. The Hewes drug testing plan would have no effect on stopping this destructive behavior and actually hurts the addict. If a welfare recipient were to fail a drug test they would have all benefits cut off. If a drug user has children Hewes says, “I think there are social services that can come in and help with that. But I don’t think children should be in an environment where there are parents who use drugs.” The irony is that the same people who support drug testing support the nuclear family. Taking kids away from their biological parents causes an increased risk of drug abuse. The similar bill in Florida has an humanitarian provision which allowed a relative of the child to pick up the child’s benefits. This protection for children is missing in the Mississippi proposal.
Interestingly Hewes says it is the business community that is asking for this drug testing. Hewes said, “We need to send a message we are serious about drug use and if there are gonna be public benefits paid to folks, they need to be subject to the same standards as people in the workforce.” I thought the problem was that these people were not in the work force. If you were to implement government mandated drug testing, it should be for everyone on the government dole. This would include not only welfare recipients. Anyone receiving college assistance, government contracts, a government paycheck, public grants, and elected officials. I wonder how Mr. Hewes would feel about being required to submit a quarterly urine test.
As the proposal stands now, the drug testing falls on a disproportionately large percentage of the African American population. Given Mississippi’s history one would think they would be more sensitive to such a discrepancy. If Hewes wants to avoid claims of racism, he would have to support broad testing. As he has not yet done that, Hewes shows his bigotry in assuming that drugs are a low class problem. Hughes may think there are no high powered executives or lawyers that are addicted to cocaine. Until a governor of a state steps up and says, “I should be drug tested.” there stances are based in a false sense of class superiority. Singling out a poor minority community for random home searches is racist and illegal. Hewes apparently thinks randomly drug testing the same community is somehow not racist.
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