Welfare recipients will go wild until screened for addiction. Then lay down the rules.
Yet another reason why welfare recipients should be screened for alcohol and other-drug addiction, with random and regular follow-up testing
California state officials recently acknowledged that hundreds of thousands of dollars in welfare payments have been dispensed monthly by ATMs in casinos and strip clubs. Officials are doing what they can to prevent such abuse by making it so ATMs in such locations will not dispense state cash. While such abuse has so far cost the state at least $5 million, a relatively insignificant amount in a state with an admitted $19 billion budget gap, the old saying, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” may apply.
While there’s no question many welfare recipients wouldn’t survive without state aid or charity (the latter of which is my preference in a perfect world), many make “bad choices.” Social workers who have an elementary understanding of addiction have told me they think somewhere north of 90% of welfare recipients are either addicts or victims of addicts. (These are the “unlucky” addicts, whose risk-taking behaviors didn’t work out. The lucky ones—those for whom risky behaviors worked—become successful politicians, attorneys, doctors, CEOs, entertainers and professional athletes.) The problem is not only that misbehaviors are, even to a small degree, rewarded with taxpayer largesse, but that such behaviors are further fueled with cash, resulting in a never-ending cycle of bad behaviors (keeping in mind that money is cited by many addicts as the biggest enabler). The problem, too, is that addicts figure out ways around rules, especially when the boundaries are filled with holes. Thinking that closing off ATMs at casinos and strip clubs is going to solve the problem when ATMs are ubiquitous is fantasy bordering on insanity. The best way to solve the issue of who “deserves” welfare and which recipients will not abuse the system is to leave the decision to charitable organizations. Given that won’t happen in our lifetimes, another approach would be to at least screen out the addicts, who are far more likely to game the system than non-addicts.