Public Address on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

Good Morning Mr. Chairperson and all Members of the Committee, I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I am John D, and I want to start by saying that this policy to drug test TANF recipients is very unfortunate. The purpose of the government is to ensure that the wellbeing of its citizens is taken care of. But this policy is striving to make life difficult for poor people who need government assistance. By making everybody from needy backgrounds to undergo testing, this could be seen as discrimination against the poor. Basing on the assumption that they do not make a lot of money so probably they are drug users. This means that this policy is bias and it violates the basic principles of humanity.

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The implementation of this policy would not mean that those people who use drugs will be caught. Tennessee is the recent example of a state where this drug testing program produced massively poor results. This is to say even if a lot of TANF recipients are using drugs or maybe they are drug addicts for that matter, drug testing programs can't seem to trace them. Remember this was a year after the state began testing all those people applying for the welfare program. Our main intention of advocating against this policy is to make sure that the rights of those needy people out there are honored, and they are treated with respect. They need help it is mean-spirited and unfair to test them for drugs before first helping them with their needs. Removal of this policy has advantages on both sides, the side of the TANF recipients and the well-off category. This is because research shows that TANF recipients with drug abuse problems have high chances of social and mental disorders and turn to alcohol and drugs to cope with their symptoms. National Association of Social Workers, and the National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors and the American Public Health Association opposes the mandatory drug testing for the welfare recipients (Drug Testing Welfare Recipients Is A Popular New Policy, 2017).

This policy will cost us more than it saves us. Report from a study of Floridas program which has since been turned down by the courts found out that there were serious misappropriations of TANF money, which was being allocated to this project of testing the TANF patients. This funds could have been spent somewhere else maybe go out to cash assistance or maybe child care. Ironically, this policy ineffectiveness rose from its unconstitutionality. Rick Scott, a government official in Florida, discovered that the courts don't see poverty as a good reason to disrespect peoples privacy rights. That is when it comes to the aspect of drug testing. That being the reason, states must come up with a reasonable suspicion" that a particular individual is abusing illegal drugs so that the state have evidence to legally challenge him/her. Many states mostly rely on the SASSI questionnaire, a test that determines the probability that a person may be a drug addict. Some of the questions in this questionnaire include, "Most individuals would lie to obtain what they need" and "Much of my life is uninteresting" to see if a person is at risk for addiction (Drug Testing Welfare Recipients Is A Popular New Policy, 2017).

Williamson a psychologist based in Ohio, explains that the test was developed for use by alcohol and drug treatment centers and not for testing welfare applicants. In fact, the people who developed the test accused the lawmakers who used their innovation to deny the welfare applicants aid. On their website, they said that the test was meant to assess addiction risk, not to determine if a person is using drugs. They also pointed out that the test was not developed to find out if someone is an addict.

This agenda requires awareness, people from every corner of this nation deserves to know what this policy means to them. Therefore to grow my advocacy network I will require some social media strategies.

First, what I will do is to create a mail list. It is estimated that they are about 2.5 billion email users worldwide. That is an amazing audience for my plan, so the next thing I will have to do is to design an online newsletter. This newsletter will contain the pros and cons of this policy, but I will guide my reader and show him/her why we should reject this policy. Once the reader has read the whole newsletter, there will be a section whereby he/she can say what he thinks about the policy. Now when several feedbacks have been sent back, we will be able to analyze it and provide a concrete report. The aim of this newsletter is to make sure that that the recipient is aware of this policy and also in return, we can get what he/she thinks about it. An example of a productive newsletter is the one created by the Bolder Advocacy Organization (www.bolderadvocacy.org).

Secondly, as per the end of last year, it was estimated that there were about 1.86 billion active Facebook users. This is a great platform to grow the awareness about this policy. People deserve to know that while these substance testing programs seem to fail terribly by most measures of public policy, they do succeed in stigmatizing struggling Americans while burning a lot of taxpayer cash. Facebook is a real time application platform, so it will be easy for me to interact with people exchange ideas and hear what they have to say about the policy. On the other hand, I will be explaining to them about the shame in which these policy is putting us in. People should be asking why we are subjecting poor individuals to drug testing when there is no evidence to support that they are drug users. Examples of successful organizations or people who have used Facebook for advocating policy change include environmental groups such as The Wild Cat Sanctuary.

Thirdly, the other social media strategy I will use is YouTube. Right Now YouTube is the largest Video sharing platform on the planet. This is a good opportunity to expand my audience and share my idea. Well, I will have to make videos of me speaking about this issue and also give Viewers graphical presentations of how this policy is affecting not only the TANF recipients but also the rest of us. The main agenda in all of these videos is make sure that people understand the discrimination, disrespect and hate this policy has against the welfare recipients. An example of YouTube users who have been able to initiate policy change include all the Worldwide Government Activists Channels

Dear Editor:

I am writing these letter to express my concern about this policy which requires that the TANF recipients be drug tested before their welfare is met. I am a psychologist and a responsible US citizen who has treated and worked with the welfare recipients. Drug testing individuals who require government support, not only aims to solve a problem that does not exist but also burns tax money. It is an extraordinarily bad policy. It should be known that one of the issues which make these policies so dangerous is the fact that lawmakers do not experience any political risk with them. A study carried out by a University of Chicago social scientist Harold Pollack confirmed that illegal substance use disorders are not common among TANF recipients. Other mental health problems are more prevalent. Drug testing welfare patient receives more attention from the lawmakers this shows a high level of biases. The government should stop violating the rights of the welfare patients and in turn provide them with care and support they need without hesitation. So the best thing lawmakers can do for us is to ban this policy

Sincerely,

Psychologist

NEW YORK, March. 5, 2017 -- Nell Rubbermaid (NYSE: NWL) today announced the need to change the policy which requires the welfare recipients to be drug tested. This policy has been a subject of debate for a while now. And this is the time we stand together and say no to discrimination of the TANF recipients. Together as a team of professional psychologist, we carried out extensive research to find out how this policy was affecting these welfare recipients. And interestingly we got enough evidence to proof to everyone that this policy means more harm than good. The unimpressive part about this policy is, it is a waste of taxpayers money and time and also a tool of discrimination. This bill is based on punishing the poor and stereotypes, said Sean OLeary, senior policy analyst at the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. Drug testing TANF recipients is a flawed and inefficient way of identifying people who need

Treatment. Its not based on facts and evidence. Also, a Huntington psychologist Sarah Jarvis said that Nursing staff, drug kits, and the testing procedure is incredibly costly to an already cash-strapped system, testing a small subgroup of the population helps no one. (Five reasons not to drug-test welfare applicants, 2017).

This policy is adding another level of stress to an already stressful situation. So it is high time we stop it before it leads to something more dangerous and costly.

So the coalition I am going to setup to help me out with my advocacy will include, some of the influential people in the society, several welfare recipients, and professional psychologists. And the criteria to recruit them will be based on their enthusiasm on TANF recipients and their general view on this policy. Once a week we will be meeting at the Park Square to discuss the progress of the coalition. The leaders will be elected by the Members present. The chart below shows the progress of the community consensus for the past three years:

References

'http://www.governing.com/authors/Alan-Greenblatt.html'}], [. '. (n.d.). Does Drug Testing Welfare Recipients Save Money? Retrieved March 24, 2017, from http://www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/gov-does-drug-testing-welfare-recipients-save-money.html

Covert, B. (2016, February 19). Drug Testing Welfare Recipients Is A Popular New Policy That Cost States Millions. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from https://thinkprogress.org/drug-testing-welfare-recipients-is-a-popular-new-policy-that-cost-states-millions-here-are-the-cf829257ade0

Five reasons not to drug-test welfare applicants. (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2017, from http://www.bing.com/cr?IG=DEA5E4047C2449C98E5A0AA8E05206B4&CID=378A3CE6A3016E093A7436A9A2306F9C&rd=1&h=9-BoVqU5KscxtcWDKCGlYw50vVdNFwY58T0CTt_2QSE&v=1&r=http%3a%2f%2fokpolicy.org%2ffive-reasons-not-to-drug-test-welfare-applicants%2f&p=DevEx,5063.1

No Savings Found in Florida Welfare Drug Tests - The New ... (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2017, from http://www.bing.com/cr?IG=BAE84DFC21854B8AB62B43C3474519A6&CID=32D020F7AB056A602AD52AB8AA346B5C&rd=1&h=zISE4YdXNCu2BcJ9cbk6YmIxDkteJr-f3slo-p8yWC4&v=1&r=http%3a%2f%2fwww.nytimes.com%2f2012%2f04%2f18%2fus%2fno-savings-found-in-florida-welfare-drug-tests.html&p=DevEx,5088.1

2002). Drug testing welfare recipientsfalse positives, false negatives, unanticipated opportunities. Women's Health Issues, 12(1), 23-31. doi:10.1016/s1049-3867(01)00139-6