Drug Testing Welfare Recipients

This gif is probably going to accurately depict anyone reading the blog I'm about to make. And for the record, it's not attacking black people or insinuating that all black people are drug users or welfare recipients. If you are a welfare recipient, this blog is not intended to offend you but this is the internet and everyone seems to get their panties in a bunch if a fiber whistles the wrong direction when they fart. If you are easily offended and hate TL;DR stuff, feel free to click away and return to cat videos.

I live in the state of Pennsylvania and like most areas, we have a lot of people on welfare. I don't know any specific percentages but from my experience of working at a grocery store, I see a lot of people come through who use some form of assistance. Everyone has their own reasons for needing assistance. Whether it's unemployment pay, food stamps, welfare, WIC, etc... there are many people who use these programs.

If you are a wealthy or financially stable individual, you probably won't relate to anything I say because you're clearly well off and not concerned about dropping pennies. However, some people aren't as fortunate and comfortable. Some people are homeless or without jobs. Many people have comfortable lives and something tragic happens and suddenly they're in need. This kind of situation could happen to anyone. Many people get stuck in this situation due to the occurrence of unfortunate events in life. I feel that even more people are just born into this bad living situation and either never make it out or never try to.

I'm personally in a financial state where I can't go overboard with buying things that I desire. I can comfortably pay my bills and if I want to buy something nice or go out to eat, I can without regret. I highly doubt I qualify for assistance, but the good Lord knows I would not mind having it. A lot of the people I see using assistance are people who are raising a family. This includes adults taking care of children and/or teenagers taking care of their children. I'm sure other demographics  participate in assistance, so this is strictly from my experience of people I've seen.

One of the most basic necessities in survival is food and water. Where do we get these things? We get them at the grocery store. Many of the people who have assistance use their assistance to provide food for their children and themselves. Certain assistance programs require you to purchase specific items with strict regulations set in place to make sure you are only buying healthy options and not wasting the assistance on non-nutritional items or items that are more for pleasure/luxury than necessity. Other programs just hand you the money and they expect you to uphold the standard of using the money for what it's intended for but not everyone is honest and some people waste the money on dumb things or things they shouldn't be buying with that assistance money.

Not everyone abuses these systems, but there are plenty of people who do. The people who abuse these systems make non-assistance tax payers angry. It makes us feel like our money is going into someones heroin addiction rather than giving their children fruit. The people who abuse these systems make assistance users afraid that they will lose assistance or cancel the programs. I don't want families in need to lose the help they're receiving, but I also don't want this money going to idiots and people wasting their life away. It's one thing to struggle putting food on the table and keeping a roof over your head and another neglecting your children and responsibilities to get high.

I think there's a lot of judgment cast over people who have welfare etc... I think the biggest assumption is that if you're on welfare, you're a lazy piece of shit. You're a poor individual who doesn't amount up to anything. You may or may not have a job, but the job isn't anything worth bragging about if you need assistance just to get by. You're probably ghetto, young, pregnant, a drug addict,  a hooker, etc... I feel like these are all of the stereotypes that welfare recipients are perceived as. While there are people who fit that stereotype, I can tell you right now that there are A LOT of genuinely great people out there who ARE making a life for themselves, who ARE trying everything possible to be something better, who DON'T do drugs, who DON'T abuse the systems etc...

The state of Pennsylvania is rolling out a program where they will drug test welfare recipients. These kinds of programs piss people off because they feel like their rights are violated if they're required to take a drug test. News flash everyone, almost all employers these days are crossing over to making it mandatory upon hire since the minimum wage is going up. Plus in my opinion, if you aren't doing anything shady and you have nothing to hide, why is it such a big deal to pee in a cup? Is that not worth the money you'll be receiving to feed your family? Is that something not worthy of sacrifice?

Well have no fear! The program that will be starting in the area is going to randomly drug test welfare recipients who have had previous drug-related marks on their record. So, if you've never been a felon  of any sort of drug-related content/crime, your chances of being drug tested are slim to none. However, if you are a welfare recipient and you have had charges and/or actively still participate in illegal drug activity...then you're the one who will be potentially targeted. This system has been put in place to help reduce the abuse of welfare while also avoiding excessive and wasteful testing on people who are honest and clean individuals.

I think this will be a great method of pulling out the weeds of the garden and allowing people who actually deserve and intend to use welfare properly, the chance to actually receive benefits and keep their heads above water. I've mentioned this time and time again in my life - I don't mind if you receive help, but you sure as hell better be using the assistance for good and not bad.

I recall reading an article/blog of a woman who has a nice house, a nice car, a nice phone, nice clothes, everything. She has several kids. She was grocery shopping and using food stamps/welfare and a person behind her in line spoke out and told her that someone like her didn't deserve that assistance and she should sell her fancy items instead of taking advantage of our tax dollars. When I was younger -- as in high school -- I had this mentality that if you were using food stamps, you don't deserve an iphone, an SUV vehicle, $60 jeans, etc... in my head...these things were for people who had jobs, worked hard, were comfortable. I had this horrible  idea that if you were on welfare, you had to be poor, look poor, act poor, do things that poor people did, you weren't allowed to have anything nice and if you did get something nice, you were cheating the system - how dare you!
I strongly feel like a lot of people have that mentality that I had when I was immature and uniformed in life. This woman wrote in the blog that she and her husband had decent jobs and a nice house and they had their own cars and started a family. Everything was peachy keen and she ended up becoming a stay at home mom because her husband got a good promotion that could support the family 100% without her having to work. She said something about doing small jobs like selling candles and kitchen accessories and throwing small luncheons with the neighbor moms etc... she took her kids to practice and invested herself into building a strong and successful family. Well one day her husband ended up getting laid off from his job. This hurt them but not enough that they couldn't recover. So she starts working again and he starts looking for another job as well. Because she was working, she didn't have the time or energy to continue her small businesses so she had to stop doing that. Likewise, the kids had to participate in less activities and relied on team-mates parents to commute them to practice etc...

Because of all of this going on, the marriage got a little rough. They began fighting and getting stressed out. The kids were stressed out, too because they were teenagers who wanted to have nice things like they were used to getting, that all of their friends were getting. Nobody likes to be the kid left out and no kid wants to be known as the poor kid with poor parents. To get the family out of the dumps they saved up enough money to take a vacation that year. They didn't do anything HUGE or expensive, but they took a few days at the beach to refresh and clear their heads. They go back to their stressful lives and something bad happens. One of their 2 cars breaks down and they can't afford to get it fixed. So at this point, the mom was making more money than the dad (I bet his ego was smashed - come @ me feminazis) so she took the car to work and he quit his job. Because he was at home all day, he took care of the house hold while she worked. Unfortunately, her income wasn't enough to pay all of the bills so they sold the broken car for cash and got rid of some things around the house. Credit cards are racked up and utility bills are stacking and they're choking in debt. One day the wife was browsing email and found an odd message. Little did she know, for almost a year while she was working as the bread-winner for the family, her husband was having a little affair with someone they knew from high school. I think you can see where this is going... For the sake of her kids, she kept this truth hidden from him and her kids because she needed to provide for her kids and she needed this broken home to stay glued together as much as possible.

Stress from work sets her off and she goes off on her husband and spills out everything she found out about his affair. After a huge fight, they ended up getting a divorce but were still living together for a little. Eventually the ex-husband moved in with this "high school friend" that he was getting with and so momma bear and her cubs are ridin' solo in this house. So this woman is trying to maintain all of this shit going on in her life and had to get rid of  the house. Since the house was in his name originally, they had to split the value of the house and she used her half to pay off her debt, her bills that she was behind on, she paid off the "family car" which he let her keep since he's a cheating douche - it's the least he could do since he ran over her heart and soul. So this woman is debt free and is working at this crappy job, making crappy money, and is trying to run this household without her douchey ex-husband. Blessing or curse? A very bittersweet blessing I think.

Fast forward to the scene at the grocery store. The woman in line goes off on her because she saw her in the nice car, wearing the nice clothes, and stuff. This mom made such little money at her job that she applied for assistance. When she did so, she felt ashamed and defeated. She felt like her self-worth was deteriorated between her divorce and financial situation. How could she go from living the soccer-mom dream to living in this nightmare - especially to have strangers jump down her throat about things that don't concern them? This mom had no reason to explain anything to the bitchzilla behind her but she did so anyway. She went on to say that her phone was used, her clothes are the clothes that she and her husband had owned when they were still married. She said she lost her house, and used every penny she had to pay off her bills, pay off her car, etc... Bitchzilla shut up real fast after this mother went off on her. I bet the cashier was standing there like "uhhhhh....here's your receipt O_O...."

This situation that this woman is/was in is a very unfortunate one that many MANY people face on a day to day basis. Please do not judge those who use assistance or need assistance. You don't know their life story. You don't understand why they are using the assistance. It's not your job to dictate what they do with their money. If you are someone who uses assistance and you're reading this. I don't mind if you treat yourself to something nice here and there as long as you and your family are being fed. If  you are tapping into drugs, weapons, unhealthy foods etc... and your life is just full of toxic activity and choices, please clean yourself up and use this assistance for what it's intended for.
Not everyone abuses the system, but those that do, really screw it up for the families who really need the assistance and could end up getting you in a situation you don't wanna be in.

Here are some tips:
If you are a student in school, please graduate school. If you don't intend to attend college, that's fine. There are plenty of successful people who never attended college. In fact, there are plenty who never even finished high school. I don't suggest dropping out because not everyone is that lucky to find success on a whim. While it is possible, don't bank on it - the odds are slim. Finish high school, at the very least. Try not to get pregnant in high school. Teen moms are very abundant these days, and I imagine it's not easy. While having children is a great opportunity, experience, and fulfilling life-time thing... it's not appropriate at that time in your life. Enjoy your life as an individual and discover what you enjoy and what you want to do with your life. Once you have your life in order, then start a family and concern yourself with challenges. For now, focus on building a name for  yourself and saving up money. Get experience doing jobs and developing skills that will put you ahead of others. If  you don't want to end up in the bottom of the pool, swim swim swim to the top and never look back. Even if you make it to the top, you can still sink, but never give up on swimming to the top. If you have a job and/or relationship and kids are a thing you want, please consider whether or not you can afford them and/or take care of them properly. Childcare is expensive and children are expensive. If you want to be able to work a full-time job and also have your children well-taken care of, you're going to need $$$$ to keep them in a day care or at a babysitter until they hit school ages and in order to pay for that you need a job. If you need assistance, don't be afraid to look into it and ask for it. If you receive it, please have good intentions with the money.

Take care all. :)