Speaking of Ron Paul, at the last debate, he said that the war on drugs has been an utter failure. We've spent billions of dollars since President Nixon and we still have rising levels of drug use. Should we continue down the same path given the amount of money we've spent? How can we reform our approach?
I think that we need to consider taking more explicit steps to make it expensive to be a drug user. It could be through testing before you get any kind of federal aid. Unemployment compensation, food stamps, you name it.
It has always struck me that if you're serious about trying to stop drug use, then you need to find a way to have a fairly easy approach to it and you need to find a way to be pretty aggressive about insisting--I don't think actually locking up users is a very good thing. I think finding ways to sanction them and to give them medical help and to get them to detox is a more logical long-term policy.
Sometime in the next year we'll have a comprehensive proposal on drugs and it will be designed to say that we want to minimize drug use in America and we're very serious about it.
So the Republican frontrunner thinks people who apply for unemployment insurance should be drug-tested before they're eligible for a benefit they paid for? And their children should go hungry until the drug test has been administered? Really?
Let's see how that worked in Florida, up until a Federal judge said it was unconstitutional. Via Raw Story:
Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s plan to test welfare recipients for drugs is costing the state money, despite his claims that the program would actually save tax dollars.
A WFTV investigation found that out of the 40 recipients tested by Department of Central Florida’s (DCF) region, only two resulted in positive results. And one of those tests is being appealed.
Under the rules of the program, the state must reimburse recipients who receive negative test results. The state paid about $1,140 for the 38 negative tests, while saving less than $240 a month by denying benefits over the two positive tests.
Keep in mind, this guy is supposed to be the conservative candidate, the small-government guy. Evidently that doesn't apply to people in need. Then he's the big -- very big -- government guy.
I really want to ask Republicans why they want a Presidential candidate who does not understand the Constitution or Bill of Rights. Clearly Newt Gingrich doesn't have any problem proposing "radical solutions" to the nation's non-existent problems of drug-addicted laid off people without regard to what the laws of our country are. And yet, these same conservatives are the ones who supposedly revere the Constitution and Bill of Rights. What gives, Newt?
