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On January 17 2014 11:05 tombigbimbom wrote:
"It ignores that current understanding of drug addiction which physically alters one's brain to the point that people continue to use even though they want to quit but cannot do so."
That's a bunch of bs I don't believe in anymore based on my experience and I don't think anyone should.
I was on morphine for close to a year, initially due to chronic pain associated with my illness and towards the end I was taking pretty large doses (up to ~400mg a day, while the minimum lethal dose is set at 200mg, 60mg for people sensitive to it). While I was on it, I quickly started to enjoy its effects and I started to like it and request prescriptions for higher and higher doses. However, one day I decided that it was enough and I didn't want to be negatively affecting my daily mental and physical performance anymore. If I wanted to, I could've continued taking it, getting prescriptions for it for the rest of my life and having it reimbursed due to the nature of my illness. But I decided that I wanted to quit. The withdrawal was painful for a few days and I was on my own. Frankly, it was as much of a nightmare as I can imagine something to be. But after it was out of my system, I was done with it. Sure, psychological effects persist and sometimes I feel like taking a large dose and nod off, especially when I'm having a few bad days. But I DECIDE not to.
After all of this, I have absolutely no sympathy for drug addicts. They are drug addicts because they CHOOSE to be, not because something tells them that they can't quit. If I can relatively easily quit a drug as addictive as morphine with my addictive personality, anyone can.
On a side note, I love the concept of this law and I feel it should exist everywhere in a refined form, if it can be good ROI. People who aren't on drugs have nothing to worry about here - one test and they get their money. If you want to get money other members of the society are funding so you can live an easier life yourself, you should at least not feel so freakin entitled. And drug addicts can go somewhere else to fund their addiction instead of the tax payers.
One individual experience does not disprove the current understanding of addiction. Different people will react in different ways to the same drug. That's great you were able to up and quit like that but for many people, it's not possible nor is it as easy. As IPA already mentioned, this is widely supported and agreed upon by the majority of medical professionals who study drug addiction.
As an aside, for those who are seriously addicted and using harder drugs (eg., narcotics, crack & powder cocaine, etc), they're more likely to NOT be eligible for government subsidies (housing, TANF, etc) because of prior felons. Additionally, they're also more likely to be disenfranchised because of this, forever losing the right to vote.
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There is a word we throw around a lot in the addiction recovery community. That word is "enabling." Enabling friends and family who think they are helping their friend or loved one is one of the greatest threats to an addicts recovery. If you give an addict money, if you give an addict shelter, you are not helping them to get better, you are merely helping them perpetuate their deadly lifestyle. In recovery programs such as the Betty Ford Center, enabling behavior is itself treated as an addiction of sorts which must be rooted out and eliminated.
An addict will only get better if they truly want to get better, and for most, that requires hitting rock bottom. Sure, it sounds cruel, which is why people are so eager to enable, but that is short sighted thinking. Just as a doctor might recognize the necessity for a painful operation, we must recognize what is necessary to overcome the powerful disease that is addiction.
This is not the opinion of a lone individual. This is the consensus among the medical and addiction recovery community. It is the standing philosophy of programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and various rehabilitation centers around the world. Florida is taking a step in the right direction.
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Yeah, just let them starve. Ain't nobody shooting' marihuana from my hard earned tax dollars!
This is so pathetic...
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United States43777 Posts
On January 18 2014 02:37 The Savage wrote:
There is a word we throw around a lot in the addiction recovery community. That word is "enabling." Enabling friends and family who think they are helping their friend or loved one is one of the greatest threats to an addicts recovery. If you give an addict money, if you give an addict shelter, you are not helping them to get better, you are merely helping them perpetuate their deadly lifestyle. In recovery programs such as the Betty Ford Center, enabling behavior is itself treated as an addiction of sorts which must be rooted out and eliminated.
An addict will only get better if they truly want to get better, and for most, that requires hitting rock bottom. Sure, it sounds cruel, which is why people are so eager to enable, but that is short sighted thinking. Just as a doctor might recognize the necessity for a painful operation, we must recognize what is necessary to overcome the powerful disease that is addiction.
This is not the opinion of a lone individual. This is the consensus among the medical and addiction recovery community. It is the standing philosophy of programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and various rehabilitation centers around the world. Florida is taking a step in the right direction.
So basically we pick a person who has made a choice we disagree with and we fuck them over because giving them the same stuff we give everyone else would be enabling them, but isn't enabling when we give it to anyone else, and by not enabling them the fucking them over is really medicine and it's just a coincidence that it happens to involve fucking over people we don't like when really we're like doctors or some shit. I think we should deny you any benefits or tax breaks you may receive in the hope that your life turns to shit, you hit rock bottom and learn not to be an ass. Trust me, I'm a doctor (well, like a doctor (I recognise necessities like doctors)).
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government =/= community or family. Even if family members shouldn't enable drug use, for the government to do stuff like this is hurting the rights of citizens.
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i wouldn't be surprised if there is a bigger portion of welfare money that is spent on legal drugs (alcohol, nicotine) then on illegal drugs.
The downside of course is that it will make the already marginalized population even more marginalized.
Obvious political move.
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On January 18 2014 02:37 The Savage wrote:
There is a word we throw around a lot in the addiction recovery community. That word is "enabling." Enabling friends and family who think they are helping their friend or loved one is one of the greatest threats to an addicts recovery. If you give an addict money, if you give an addict shelter, you are not helping them to get better, you are merely helping them perpetuate their deadly lifestyle. In recovery programs such as the Betty Ford Center, enabling behavior is itself treated as an addiction of sorts which must be rooted out and eliminated.
An addict will only get better if they truly want to get better, and for most, that requires hitting rock bottom. Sure, it sounds cruel, which is why people are so eager to enable, but that is short sighted thinking. Just as a doctor might recognize the necessity for a painful operation, we must recognize what is necessary to overcome the powerful disease that is addiction.
This is not the opinion of a lone individual. This is the consensus among the medical and addiction recovery community. It is the standing philosophy of programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and various rehabilitation centers around the world. Florida is taking a step in the right direction.
It comes from what approach you think. Humanistic or Behaviorism, Neuroscience is pretty heavy in here too.
Humanistic believes that humans will only get better when they want to, it comes down to the addict to change.
Behaviorism is where you treat the addiction by associating feeling good with something else, hard to do if the drug feels really good.
Neuroscience: Give them a drug that causes them to change. It can work, it's frowned upon cause trading one drug for another is frowned upon now.
I would prefer the behaviorism approach. Where they don't hit rock bottom but instead are given the opportunity to explore different routes to happiness.
Btw, enabling can occur with or without drugs. I don't see how enabling has anything to do with drug tests. The money can easily be given to people who gamble, how do we test blood/urine for that? Just figure out what amount of money is ok to throw away on people who are going to throw it away. Don't punish people who aren't going to throw money away cause a few are.
The government throws away money on prototypes for army supplies, surely they can throw less money away on poor people.
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On January 18 2014 02:37 The Savage wrote:
There is a word we throw around a lot in the addiction recovery community. That word is "enabling." Enabling friends and family who think they are helping their friend or loved one is one of the greatest threats to an addicts recovery. If you give an addict money, if you give an addict shelter, you are not helping them to get better, you are merely helping them perpetuate their deadly lifestyle. In recovery programs such as the Betty Ford Center, enabling behavior is itself treated as an addiction of sorts which must be rooted out and eliminated.
An addict will only get better if they truly want to get better, and for most, that requires hitting rock bottom. Sure, it sounds cruel, which is why people are so eager to enable, but that is short sighted thinking. Just as a doctor might recognize the necessity for a painful operation, we must recognize what is necessary to overcome the powerful disease that is addiction.
This is not the opinion of a lone individual. This is the consensus among the medical and addiction recovery community. It is the standing philosophy of programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and various rehabilitation centers around the world. Florida is taking a step in the right direction.
Just because it's the philosophy of AA and other rehabilitation centers doesn't necessarily mean it's correct, nor the right thing to do (I won't focus on that as a few others have before). However, I do want to mention the empirical evidence, in my opinion, does not support AA's efficacy for promoting absenteeism. One of the better meta-analyses conducted by Kownacki and Shadish (1999) examined 21 controlled studies. They found the results really don't support it, especially when coerced. In some cases, AA is worse than even trying to get help.
It leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth that you'd take this route, especially if you are involved in the recovery community.
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AA is a horrible program. The success rate of it is less than 10% almost everywhere its involved, ontop of that, it forces you to turn to religion in order to solve your problem. It's so incredibly sad that AA is forced on so many people that need actual help. Not nonsense.
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That's incorrect as per your first source:
Scott’s company didn’t bid on the contract to conduct the state tests.
Solantic is more of a walk-in clinic for basic medical treatment and not the best choice for contracting something like this.
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I disapprove of welfare in pretty much all it's forms. As long as there are less recipients that are drawing from that entitlement, I'm a happier person.
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I'm actually surprised there is so much arguing about this when the idea is simple. Drugs are illegal, why should government give people money to spend on things that they themselves outlaw? We wouldn't be having this discussion if it was "government denies welfare money to men who buy prostitutes." Now would we? Well, probably would as people would go "why shouldn't the government give them money just because they indulge in illegal activities? that's cruel!" But you get the point.
Now of course the other issue is as has been stated that doing this ends up costing a lot more money in drug tests then it saves so in practicality it's not a good idea, but as far as in theory and if it could be done cost effectively, I don't see how people can argue for the government giving money for spending on illegal expensive activities.
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On January 18 2014 06:45 hunts wrote:
I'm actually surprised there is so much arguing about this when the idea is simple. Drugs are illegal, why should government give people money to spend on things that they themselves outlaw? We wouldn't be having this discussion if it was "government denies welfare money to men who buy prostitutes." Now would we? Well, probably would as people would go "why shouldn't the government give them money just because they indulge in illegal activities? that's cruel!" But you get the point.
Now of course the other issue is as has been stated that doing this ends up costing a lot more money in drug tests then it saves so in practicality it's not a good idea, but as far as in theory and if it could be done cost effectively, I don't see how people can argue for the government giving money for spending on illegal expensive activities.
Well implementation is key when it comes to anything regarding welfare. Everybody, liberals and conservatives alike, want welfare abuse to stop, but any solution has to be a good one, and not one that either wastes money or gets innocent people screwed over in the process.
For drug abuse, there's the obvious problem in that drug testing everybody on welfare actually costs more than the money saved. When it comes to restricting what a person can or can't buy with welfare, there has to be good enough oversight that nobody ends up going hungry because we restricted something a person needs to survive.
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Makes perfect sense. If you want welfare the money should only be used to keep you in a barely living fugue state. We should also not give welfare to anyone that spends more that fifteens dollars per month on the lottery, buys more than one videogames a year, plays LoL, or collects magic cards. After all, why would I want my tax money going to someone's trade binder?
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Sorry to bother you guys.. but how is the money distributed to the person? Bank account, cash in hand or something else? Because the basic healthcare insurance we get here for example is we can pay the bills from hospitals and doctors and most common recipes with it but we don´t get any money directly. And we don´t have any related drug test then because the persons can´t abuse the healthcare system because they don´t get any money from it directly.
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On January 18 2014 07:18 Nachtwind wrote:
Sorry to bother you guys.. but how is the money distributed to the person? Bank account, cash in hand or something else? Because the basic healthcare insurance we get here for example is we can pay the bills from hospitals and doctors and most common recipes with it but we don´t get any money directly. And we don´t have any related drug test then because the persons can´t abuse the healthcare system because they don´t get any money from it directly.
You need cash to buy food.
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On January 18 2014 06:45 hunts wrote:
I'm actually surprised there is so much arguing about this when the idea is simple. Drugs are illegal, why should government give people money to spend on things that they themselves outlaw? We wouldn't be having this discussion if it was "government denies welfare money to men who buy prostitutes." Now would we? Well, probably would as people would go "why shouldn't the government give them money just because they indulge in illegal activities? that's cruel!" But you get the point.
Now of course the other issue is as has been stated that doing this ends up costing a lot more money in drug tests then it saves so in practicality it's not a good idea, but as far as in theory and if it could be done cost effectively, I don't see how people can argue for the government giving money for spending on illegal expensive activities.
Not to mention most of the positive tests are/would be for marijuana because of THC's long half-life in urine instead of the prescription medications which are the main cause of death and overdose among drug users. (alcohol, prescriptions, and tobacco kill and cost the American people exponentially more than the marijuana use, testing like this is most likely to uncover.
Marijuana is only illegal and not considered a miracle medicine because of ass-backwards people who think it should be criminalized without knowing anything about it. Or temperance lingerers who want to ban any thing any one else indulges in that they don't.
There are countless reasons why this sounds good but is a categorically idiotic idea many of which have already been noted.
The idea that you would either spend more to prevent a small group (smaller % than the general population) of poor people from getting government aid because they are "drug" users/addicts, or just have people (many of whom have jobs they work) choose between things like heat or food because welfare has been abolished and there are only so many jobs that pay a living wage and many more people than jobs.
So inevitably some people will be stuck in jobs that don't pay a living wage with literally no way for many of them to get a better wage because there simply isn't a job open that pays better regardless of their skill sets.
Well unless we mandated a living wage aka minimum wage that actually allowed people to spend their money as is advised by financial professionals, allocating proportional amounts to expenses ie x% for rent x% for food etc... if they wanted to blow their money on drugs and not have money for food that's on them. It's really simple one could start just by not having Jobs that pay you so little that you still need government assistance to cover the basic necessities. Or you can just keep inflating top earners salaries and increasing middle class taxes to make sure the people that top executives make their money off of don't die or revolt.
If one family (who intentionally payed their employees little enough to qualify for government assistance) didn't have more wealth than 40% of the American people maybe there would be some more to go around without having to place the burden on the middle class...?
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On January 18 2014 07:27 Faust852 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 07:18 Nachtwind wrote:
Sorry to bother you guys.. but how is the money distributed to the person? Bank account, cash in hand or something else? Because the basic healthcare insurance we get here for example is we can pay the bills from hospitals and doctors and most common recipes with it but we don´t get any money directly. And we don´t have any related drug test then because the persons can´t abuse the healthcare system because they don´t get any money from it directly. You need cash to buy food.
Food stamps have cards now. You don't need "cash" anymore. You just are given a card you swipe to pay for food items. WIC, (pregnant) women, infants, and children, gives you a specific check that lets you get a certain food items only, milk cheese, fruits, vegetables, very few cereals... etc. Food stamps and the snap program in the US give you access to all food items except alcohol and supplements.
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TLADT24920 Posts
On January 18 2014 06:45 hunts wrote:
I'm actually surprised there is so much arguing about this when the idea is simple. Drugs are illegal, why should government give people money to spend on things that they themselves outlaw? We wouldn't be having this discussion if it was "government denies welfare money to men who buy prostitutes." Now would we? Well, probably would as people would go "why shouldn't the government give them money just because they indulge in illegal activities? that's cruel!" But you get the point.
Now of course the other issue is as has been stated that doing this ends up costing a lot more money in drug tests then it saves so in practicality it's not a good idea, but as far as in theory and if it could be done cost effectively, I don't see how people can argue for the government giving money for spending on illegal expensive activities.
I won't pretend to be an expert on this issue but I think Florida should have a part B to their plan. They plan to drug test for welfare. That's fine and all but make it that those who fail the drug test have to go through a drug program to try and help them come clean. Getting addicted to a drug and trying to quit is very difficult because your brain chemistry gets altered and the neurotransmitter affected changes with the drug used and such. Personally, I don't think it would be right to deny them money if they need it but at the same time trying to promote a healthy lifestyle is a must. I think this issue is not as black and white as people see it but in the grey.
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On January 18 2014 06:39 Wolfstan wrote:
I disapprove of welfare in pretty much all it's forms. As long as there are less recipients that are drawing from that entitlement, I'm a happier person.
Wellfare in all it's forms? Wellfare is when money is given to someone without expecting in return. Does this mean you don't believe in people giving money to their children? Extended family can't give money to extended family?
Where do you draw the line? Can communities help people out? Is education not supposed to be given freely? Do we simply euthanize anyone who gets under the poverty line?
It is a very libertarian/social darwinism approach to simply cut off supply to people who are unable to support themselves (those who are disabled) or simply lazy.
I myself don't feel our defense budget should be in the several hundreds of billions of dollars. Most of the social prgrams in the budget, when compared defense, don't even make a dent in the debt when cut to nothing.
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EPT
