Police Say It's Unconstitutional To Mandate Drug Testing On Officers. A civil rights grievance has been filed against the city of Pittsburgh, with officers claiming that being required to undergo mandatory drug testing is a violation of the Constitution.
Credit: GreenRushDaily.com By Lisa Rough / Leafly In an incredibly backwards display of irony, the union representing the Pittsburgh police has filed a most unusual lawsuit. A civil rights grievance has been filed against the city, claiming that officers being required to undergo mandatory drug testing is not only a violation of their contract but of the Constitution as well. Curiously enough, it appears that this unconstitutionality only applies to police officers, not to the public that they are meant to protect and serve. Officers may be subjected to drug testing in three circumstances: If an officer is suspected of being under the influence on the job;If an officer fires their weapon;If the officer is involved in a car crash. The lawsuit arose as a result of a car chase and crash on Baum Boulevard. Year 1 of Drug Testing Welfare Applicants in TN: Epic Fail. Tennessee's Drug Tests Of Welfare Recipients Find 37 Drug Users. By Alan Pyke Posted on Share this: "Tennessee’s Drug Tests Of Welfare Recipients Find 37 Drug Users" Share: CREDIT: Shutterstock Less than one half of one percent of Tennesseeans who applied for public assistance flunked a drug test in the first six months of the state’s experiment with drug screenings for welfare recipients, according to recently released state figures.
Out of more than 16,000 applicants from the beginning of July through the end of 2014, just 37 tested positive for illegal drug use. Such an infinitesimal rate of drug use among welfare applicants contrasts sharply with the state’s overall 8 percent rate of drug use. Separate research has also found that the facts do not support the stigmatizing ideas about low-income Americans and drug use that motivate drug testing schemes like these. But the idea of drug testing poor folk before doling out food money and rental assistance continues to spread despite all the evidence and expert testimony against the practice. Tennessee Drug Tests Welfare Applicants, Discovers Less Than One Percent Use Drugs. By Bryce Covert Posted on "Tennessee Drug Tests Welfare Applicants, Discovers Less Than One Percent Use Drugs" CREDIT: Shutterstock In July, Tennessee began a drug testing program for applicants to the state’s welfare program.
Since then, just one person has tested positive out of more than 800. Applicants have to answer three questions about drug use to get benefits, and if they answer yes to any of them, they get referred to urine testing. In the month since it began, six people submitted to a drug test and just one tested positive out of the 812 people who applied.
Despite stereotypes that the poor people who need welfare assistance use drugs at a high rate, other states have had similar results. And when Maine’s governor set out to prove that welfare recipients in his state were using their benefits to buy drinks and cigarettes at bars and strip clubs, he turned up next to nothing. Welfare recipients may be spending so much less in part because the benefits have become so meager. Welfare Recipients Are Actually Mostly White And Less Likely Than The Average American To Use Drugs - Short answer: No, and fuck the people who made this graphic.
Long answer: Let’s learn from what happened in Florida. Gov. Voldemort Rick Scott (who, not coincidentally, has a financial interest in a drug testing facility; he just transferred legal ownership of it to his WIFE) decided to drug test welfare recipients. This cost taxpayers millions of dollars and lined his wallet, and they found that only 2% of all welfare recipients tested actually tested positive for drugs. Of that 2%, ALL of them had family members who were eligible for welfare, so NO welfare money was saved by attempting to deny it to people on drugs. “The U.S. Which is why Governor Scott was, indeed, ordered to cut it out and to stop giving state government workers a whiz quiz: “U.S.
“The Governor can’t order the state to search people’s bodily fluids for no reason — the Constitution prohibits that sort of government intrusion,” Howard Simon, director of the Florida ACLU, said in a statement.