The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

Local News

March 3, 2009

Welfare drug testing called ‘ridiculous’

By Mannix Porterfield

CHARLESTON — Subjecting folks on public assistance to drug testing is “the most ridiculous” idea to emerge in this legislative session, Delegate Sally Susman asserted Tuesday.

Susman made known her disgust with the measure crafted by Delegate Craig Blair, one that has triggered the most passions so far under the Capitol dome.

“Your latest legislative proposal is such staggering nonsense I was surprised the members of your own party did not laugh you out of the House of Delegates,” Susman, D-Raleigh, told Blair in a typed letter she left on his House desk.

Blair shrugged off criticism of his bill that would subject anyone getting food stamps, welfare checks or jobless benefits to random drug testing. If a test is positive, the recipient would be sent to rehabilitation. If a second checkup shows drugs, the assistance would be cut off immediately.

“She expressed her opinion; she’s entitled to do that,” Blair, R-Berkeley, said after the floor session.

“But I’m expressing the opinion of the people of West Virginia, also. From everything I can gather, my opinion carries a lot more weight on that because of the fact I’m seeing it 20-1 positive in the e-mails coming in.”

Meantime, Blair acknowledged he once called for the decriminalization of marijuana, but only when used for medicinal purposes such as maintaining appetite and blocking regurgitation of patients undergoing chemotherapy.

“God placed that here on this earth for us,” he said of marijuana. “Maybe it has some positive effects.”

Susman said she could only assume that someone swiped some of Blair’s stationery and submitted the “two strikes and you’re out” bill under his name.

“The notion that a person should be drug-tested — randomly, at first, you note, kindly — because he or she receives public assistance is no more grounded in logic than that a person with a public pension should be tested because he or she receives public funds,” she wrote to Blair.

“I have looked at the faces of the people who visit the grocery store in my district, and those on public assistance are more frequently than not etched with shame, not marred with drug ecstasy.”

Susman said most people on the dole are hardly rejoicing at getting a public handout.

“People can use food stamps only for food and they employ them to put food on the table for their children,” the delegate said.

“Your legislation is an insult to downtrodden citizens who are trying to keep their families from starvation.”

Susman called the Blair proposal “not only an outrage” but impractical to boot.

“Why not demand the same thing for white-collar criminals — corporate executives who have profited from recent congressional largess, movie stars who make obscene amounts of money for marginal work, those who enjoy a large tax refund each year or members of the Legislature?” she asked.

As did one response to his special Web site on the issue, Susman suggested Blair’s colleagues demand that he be tested for drugs.

In fact, Blair, in pitching the bill last month, offered to take a drug test to answer his critics.

Blair challenged House Speaker Rick Thompson, D-Wayne, to make good his pledge to give all legislation a fair hearing.

“I want this bill to get its fair day in the Legislature and have an opportunity to be heard,” he added.

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com

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