What is Wrong with Testing Welfare Recipients for Drug Use?
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321717692166 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717692166
Political Studies
2017, Vol. 65(4) 912 –929
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321717692166
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What is Wrong with
Testing Welfare Recipients
for Drug Use?
Cristian Pérez-Muñoz
Abstract
Is mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients morally justifiable? This article argues that
none of the three justifications typically offered in support of drug testing—that is, paternalist,
contractualist, and harm-based justifications—are normatively persuasive. On the one hand, I
claim that these normative justifications do not warrant the violation of welfare recipients’ privacy.
That is, I argue that they fail to make the case that the benefits of drug testing outweigh its costs
in terms of welfare recipients’ privacy. On the other hand, I argue that even if we accept any of
these normative justifications for drug testing, current background conditions in the US make
the implementation of this policy unfair in practice. First, the enforcement of drug testing can
strengthen existing injustices. Second, under current circumstances, drug testing policies are likely
to engender moral obligations which cannot be fulfilled.
Keywords
drug testing, welfare policies, behavioral conditionality
Accepted: 13 November 2016
In recent years, drug testing for welfare recipients has received much attention in the United
Kingdom, the United States, and New Zealand (Wincup, 2014). In the United States, for
example, the large number of state legislatures considering the adoption of this policy has
recently pushed the subject to the forefront of public debate. To put this in perspective, by
March 2016, at least 15 states had passed legislation on drug testing for welfare applicants
and recipients (National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), 2016).
However, most of the existing research on drug tests for welfare recipients is confined
to legal scholarship, assessing the constitutional nature of this policy. That debate is not
framed around the specifically ethical issues surrounding drug testing, but rather around
the question of whether this behavioral instrument impinges upon welfare recipients’
Institute of Political Science, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile
Corresponding author:
Cristian Pérez-Muñoz, Institute of Political Science, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. Vicuña
Mackenna 4860, Macul, Santiago, Chile.
Email: crperezm@uc.cl
692166PSX0010.1177/0032321717692166Political StudiesPérez-Muñoz
research-article2017
Article
Pérez-Muñoz 913
Fourth Amendment rights. Unfortunately, the normative literature—in contrast to legal
debates—is still very limited.
This article aims to fill this gap by providing a normative evaluation of drug testing.
Given its particularly salient role in US welfare politics, my analysis focuses on recent
adoptions of—and debates surrounding—drug testing policies in the American welfare
system. I contend that none of the three justifications typically offered in support of drug
testing—that is, paternalist, contractualist, and harm-based justifications—are norma-
tively persuasive in this particular case. On the one hand, I claim that these normative
justifications fail to make the case that the benefits of drug testing outweigh its costs in
terms of welfare recipients’ privacy. On the other hand, I argue that even if we accept any
of the three normative justifications for drug testing, current background conditions in the
US make the implementation of this policy unfair in practice. This happens for two rea-
sons. First, the enforcement of drug testing can strengthen existing injustices. Second,
under current circumstances, drug testing policies are likely to engender moral obliga-
tions which cannot be fulfilled. This notably holds for the many cases in which drug users
may have neither the ability nor the opportunity to change their behavior.1
This article is organized into two sections. The section “Three Justifications for Drug
Testing” explains the three main justifications for drug testing typically utilized by schol-
ars, politicians, and policy analysts. The section “Normative Challenges to Drug Testing”
presents objections to these normative justifications. The main policy implication of this
article is that drug testing should not be used to determine who might or might not benefit
from welfare policies. Although some of the goals behind the use of this instrument are
normatively valuable, academics, politicians, and practitioners should also begin to
investigate alternative policy instruments that minimize the normative problems associ-
ated with current drug testing programs.
Three Justifications for Drug Testing
In the US, the enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act
(PRWORA) in 1996 facilitated the practice of testing welfare recipients for drug use. The
goal behind PRWORA was to promote self-sufficiency and minimize welfare depend-
ency by moving families from welfare to employment. In this context, drug use was
thought of as a crucial factor that negatively affected the poor’s self-sufficiency and
increased their dependence on public assistance. PRWORA’s justificatory discourse
echoed the normative guidelines legitimizing the “War on Drugs” (Amundson et al.,
2014). For instance, PRWORA (Section 902) encouraged states to ban welfare applicants
with drug felony convictions from receiving welfare aid (Gustafson, 2011: 55).
In recent years, several states passed laws to mandate drug testing for welfare recipients.
Two paradigmatic cases are the drug testing programs established by Michigan and Florida.
In a nutshell, the state of Michigan planned to test all applicants for Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families (TANF)2 and randomly test 20% of TANF recipients every 6 months
(NCSL, 2016). The program stipulated that those applicants who tested positive or who
refused to be tested would be banned from welfare assistance for a 1-year period. The
period of ineligibility increased for those who repeatedly tested positive. That law, however,
was finally overruled in 2003 by the decision of a Federal District Court (NCSL, 2016).
Similarly, in 2011, Florida passed House Bill 353, which enacted drug testing for all
TANF applicants (Barile, 2012: 794). This suspicionless drug testing program asked wel-
fare applicants to pay for the cost of their own urinalysis test. While there was a stipulated
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