Alabama Rep. Robert Aderholt wants to revive a house bill that is permitting states to test the recipients of low-income food stamps. The Alabama representative said there will be huge savings if people who are positive will not be given food stamps.
AP reported that Robert Aderholt said it will depend on the state as to whether they will follow the new bill. He also said Thursday that it will help those people who tested positive. They will be sent to rehabilitation facilities. The money that will be saved from this will be allocated to drug rehabilitation facilities. Republican representatives have wanted to dissolve this program.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP has cost $74 billion giving free food to 46 million Americans with low-income. However, according to Care2, this drug testing move isn't really effective. It did not help sates like Tennessee, Oklahoma, Utah, Florida and Arizona. Those states did the drug testing but only one to five percent of the people tested were positive so it did not really make a huge difference. Consequently, those drug testing was stopped because the results were underwhelming. It did not save any money as only a few were positive.
Nevertheless, those things does not apply to every state in the U.S. Breitart stated that North Carolina's outcome is different as 24% of the people they tested were positive. Moreover, other people who were scheduled to be tested did not attend, making the government hypothesize that they do use illegal drugs.
On the other hand, not all republicans are in favor of drug testing. Republican Governor Pat McCrory said this method does not necessarily save money because the cost of the test is also expensive. It costs $55 per applicant. The money that is supposed to be save and will be put in the drug rehab facilities will be use for tests instead. Democrats are saying that the testing is useless and waste of time and money.
