title:  North Carolina Drug Tested Welfare Recipients And The Results Are Surprising
text: Republicans must be shocked. And taxpayers should be pissed.Republicans were so sure that welfare recipients are on drugs, that they desperately tried to humiliate poor people by quickly passing a bill forcing applicants to take a drug test in order to get government aid.The governor vetoed the legislation but Republicans refused to be denied their chance to persecute poor people, so they overturned the veto.The process of testing so many applicants, of course, took awhile because more than 7,600 people needed to be screened.The results are finally in and Republicans are not going to like the numbers.Despite being so convinced that welfare recipients must be drug addicts that they were willing to use taxpayer money to institute a program to prove it, all they got was egg on their face.As it turns out, only 21 of the people tested positive for drug use. That s 0.3 percent of those tested, which is far below the national average of 8 percent.North Carolina Democratic state Senator Gladys Robinson blasted the GOP for wasting time and money. They found very few applicants. Plus, the process is already in place in terms of asking questions and making those referrals. So, we just wasted state dollars, in terms of that piece of legislation and in terms of the time and staff all across the state. Taxpayers should be furious at Republicans right now for wasting money attacking the poor instead of using it to help lift people out of poverty in the first place so that less people have to rely on the government to get by.Perhaps they should be forced to take a mandatory drug test to continue being an elected official. Because they had to be high on something when they insisted that part of the population who pay their own ridiculous salaries were abusing the system.Featured Image: Cagle