Welfare Applicants and Drug Use

Parent Cafe
41

<p>“the usual conditions”? Usual where? Any program I’ve been involved in ( court referred rehab, and I think juvenile justice) includes watching you pee, and checking the temp of the sample. There are also tests for adulterants. And then there is hair testing."</p>

<p>I certainly am not an expert on urine tests, so I assumed the"usual conditions" are what I have encountered for employment (hiring, twice yearly medical, and periodic spot checks). I have never, ever, had anyone search me nor watch me pee. </p>

<p>Are these welfare recipients being hair tested? I would doubt it, that is probably quite expensive. Are they actually being watched while they pee? I suppose it would be best to get the specific details on this before we guess on what is happening.We can guess all we want, but without knowing specific details, it is hard to determine the truth. If the entire drug test consists of, show up on this day and go into a private restroom with a plastic cup to pee in…yeah, pretty darn easy to bring a little bottle of someone else’s pee with you. Is it really likely they are strip searching, hair testing, and physically watching people urinate? 27 years of urine tests…that’s never happened to me.</p>

42

<p>There are fake *****es that those being drug tested wear over the real one. It’s essentially a urine storage bag for drug-free urine. (I only know this because there was a news story recently about a Hollywood actor being drug tested who was caught wearing one).</p>

<p>Don’t know what women do.</p>

43

<p>Well, the automatic censor wouldn’t let me use a medical term the male sex organ. They wear fake thingees, wee-wees, johnsons. </p>

<p>(How childish to censor the proper name for it)</p>

44

<p>A very, very, very small number of people try all kinds of things, and they usually get caught. But it makes for good stories and urban legends.</p>

45

<p>Well, it makes sense, you need to pass a drug test to get a job. If you are not planning to work, got to fill your time with something. I do not blame them, they support one industry well.</p>

46

<p>Can’t remember the actor for sure (Tom Sizemore, maybe) but the story made the LA Times and the radio so I wouldn’t call it an urban legend. </p>

<p>Unless there are people in the bathroom with the person being tested, it would be pretty easy to substitute someone else’s urine. And even when someone is there the fake thingees might get past a few.</p>

47

<p>The proper procedure includes a one way mirror, and a check of the urine temperture and adultrants.The person knows they are being watched. It is NOT the same procedure followed for most peoples work. And yes, some people work hard at fooling it ( Anybody see Gattica? I think it points out some interesting themes we talk about here on CC), but I’m not sure it would apply to the average person getting random tests for welfare. Anyway, I don’t think whether or not you can folol the test was the point of this thread.</p>

48

<p>Gattaca is my dad’s favorite movie and one of mine. Great sci-fi flick.</p>

<p>By the way, no “i” in Gattaca. The letters A, C, G, and T are the first letters of the four nucleotides that make up DNA. Neat, huh?</p>

49

<p>^ Ah yes! I forgot; I had just learned that the last time I saw it!</p>

50

<p>I think I had seen it two or three times before I made the connection.</p>

51

<p>

I have no personal knowledge of the rate of drug use among welfare applicants - and certainly not in Florida - but the idea of any significant number of welfare applicants buying designer drugs online strikes me as improbable. All of the welfare recipients I’ve encountered in my professional life were single Moms scraping to get by while raising their own kids (and often other kids as well.) I couldn’t say that any of the ones I personally knew were likely candidates for being junkies. (And I’m pretty darn sure that none of them were buying exotic chemicals over the internet.)</p>

<p>The fake <cough> -nis used to beat a urine test was a story line on Entourage. I don’t know if it was based on a real incident or not.</cough></p>

52

<p>I don’t believe the 2% figure in the least even in the general population. For that matter I suspect more than 2% of the people on CC use illicit drugs. As far as beating the tests, this is the response from somebody who has done it and who is on buprenorphine (ie a drug addict):</p>

<p>“tests can always be beaten. However, the methadone and buprenorphine clients really are watched like hawks…I will say that the things that are floating around the world these days defnitelty cannot be seen on tests… The typical welfare recipient would not be imbibing chemicals that fall off the grid, so to speak. As far as the $30 test goes it is reliable, however it is probably a basic 5 panel test which includes: opiates, cocaine, barbiturates, marijuana, and benzo’s. How many recipients did they test to decide on 2%.
…”</p>