Skip to main content

Collateral Sanctions

Collateral Sanctions Subtopics:

Drug Testing Welfare Applicants Will Only Cause Horrible Problems

From the State of Virginia emerges this week's dumbest drug war idea:
Some welfare applicants and beneficiaries would be required to pass a drug test and receive counseling to receive public assistance under a controversial bill being considered by the Virginia General Assembly.

Under the proposal, which has been approved by the Senate, people applying for or in the state's job-training program, which is required to receive welfare, would be questioned about substance abuse. Those thought to be abusing drugs could be required to take a drug test. [Washington Post]
I can just hear the chorus of self-righteous legislators insisting that we mustn't subsidize addiction with public funds.

But I have a few questions. Who's going to intervene when a mother of four gets a false positive and suddenly can't feed her family? Will there be monitoring to prevent racial disparities in who is subjected to testing? How will any of this address the far larger problem of alcohol abuse?

If our society is going to offer public assistance to those in need, we cannot afford to shape such programs around the blunt instrument of urinalysis. When it works, drug testing tells you whether someone has used drugs. It doesn't tell you if they need treatment or whether their welfare check is being put to legitimate use. When drug testing doesn't work, it falsely accuses innocent people and subjects them to undeserved sanctions and stigma.

Even when it hits its target, the program just creates more problems:
Limited resources for treatment present another challenge. The state has a waiting list of 800 to 1,000, depending on the type of substance abuse service. The average wait is several weeks. Adding people to the list will tax government programs further, critics say.
This is the exact program you have to attend in order to regain eligibility for public assistance, but you can't get into it because Virginia's too busy busting and drug testing people to pay for treatment. The whole thing is just a massive escalator to nowhere.

Whatever one thinks about government assistance, it should at least be clear that infecting existing programs with the blind and corrupt influence of the drug war will merely ruin more lives.

Drug Taxes Out of Control Violating Due Process

Last week I posted some discussion of the Drug Tax phenomenon, along with a scan of a notice one of our readers received following his being charged with an alleged marijuana offense. Last night I got an email from Matt Potter, president of North Carolina State University's Students for Sensible Drug Policy chapter and a member of the Student Senate, with some very revealing information recounted from his freshman year in a Law and Justice course. Matt wrote:
My freshman year of college I had a professor for Law and Justice who was the interim director of the NC Illegal Substances Tax division, and he loved going off on tangents talking about his job... [H]e told me several things [about drug taxes], such as that the burden of proof in a drug tax hearing is actually on the defendant. In addition to hearsay being enough to find people responsible for the tax, the person can actually be acquitted of the crime (or not charged at all) and still be found responsible for paying the tax. It is also a retrospective tax. He explained this by saying: If your grandmother smoked an ounce in the 60s and we found out about it, we could collect the tax from her on that ounce.
Well there it is, as Matt put it, right "from the horse's (ass') mouth." I think the evidence is more than clear -- drug taxes are an outrage. As I commented last week, "take this drug tax and..."

Take this drug tax and...

click on image to enlarge in separate window
This week saw some good news, when a Tennessee judge ruled that the state's "drug tax" -- a drug war revenue collection scheme in which people involved with illegal drugs are required to incriminate themselves by paying taxes, and can be billed after the fact for the tax plus penalties -- is unconstitutional. The ruling came in the case of Steven Waters of Knoxville, who was billed $55,000 in 2005 for a kilogram of cocaine that had been valued at $12,000. Scurrilously, the state intends to continue enforcing the tax as if the ruling never happened, for as long as they can get away with it. The drug tax notice posted here, from which we blotted out the personal information, was sent to us by one of our readers. The state of Iowa is prosecuting him and trying to take his family's house that they've owned since building it in 1876 -- obviously not built with drug money, as he pointed out. The tax, as you can see, is well over $100,000. Because the tax action is civil, not criminal, the level of due process he has available to him is much less -- no judge approved this notice, the revenue agency is just saying he owes them 136K and he better pay up. He hasn't even gone to trial yet, and the notice doesn't even specify the quantity or value of the marijuana. It looks like they treat drug taxes more harshly than other kinds of tax dealt with on the form, as it says "If this assessment is for drug taxes, you have 60 days to appeal, but you cannot pay the amount shown and then file a refund claim after repayment." Our friend claims his innocence, and he made the following argument in one of his emails to me:
"The pot that I am being taxed on was found in containers on my property which I couldn't see from my house. I had less than an ounce in my house. You would think if I were going to keep that much valuable pot just laying in the weeds where anyone could help themselves to it, I would have at least put no trespassing signs on my place, which I didn't."
"You should see the list of damage they did to my things," he added.

widely-distributed Tennessee drug tax stamp image
While I haven't independently verified our reader's account, I believe him, and will continue to unless I learn reasons why I shouldn't. But it almost doesn't matter, because the laws and the punishments are so unjust in any case. And there's no question, if you want to frame someone, in this case maybe even get his house, there's no easier way to do it than with drugs. As he put it, "Pretty good way to rob someone, just put some containers of hemp on his place at night where he can't see it, then take what you want." And while we don't know if that's what happened, again, it almost doesn't matter, from a policy level at least, because it couldn't be easier to do, and therefore it undoubtedly does happen. We run police corruption stories in our newsletter every week, and this week we have a piece of misspending of asset forfeiture funds too. This case involves multiple issues. It involves asset forfeiture, it involves the drug tax, it involves the always unjust prohibition laws, and it demonstrates the potential at least for framing and abuse. Back in Tennessee, it also seems to involve the arrogance of an agency that thinks it can ignore a judge's ruling with impunity, and sadly is probably right. Since the issue of the week is drug taxes (thanks to an enlightened Tennessee jurist), I will conclude this time by saying, "take this drug tax and..."

Drug Testing: Bills to Drug Test for Public Assistance Recipients Pop Up Again

Another legislative season begins across the land, and with it comes another crop of bills demanding drug testing of people receiving public benefits, from unemployment to food stamps to state medical assistance. They're expensive, they're impractical, and they're most likely unconstitutional, but that doesn't stop drug war demagogues from promoting them.