A bill to require random drug testing of CALWORKS welfare > recipients

> recipients will be heard by the State Senate Human Services Committee
> next April 29th. The bill would require every recipient who tests
> positive for illicit drugs, including marijuana, to submit to a year
> of forced treatment. It includes no exception for medical marijuana.
>
> http://info.sen.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=sb_384&sess=CUR&house=B&site=sen
> Key Senators on the Commitee are Chair Carol Liu (D-Glendale),
> Leland Yee (D-SF), Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara), Abel Maldanado
> (R-Monterey) and George Runner (R-Lancaster).
> The bill is sponsored by State Senator John Benoit (R - Palm
> Desert), who carried a similar bill last year in the Assembly. It
> is co-sponsored by the usual gaggle of Republican ideologues, who
> think they are saving tax-payers money on welfare payments but are
> actually wasting it on an inherently flawed drug testing technology
> that wrongly treats harmless marijuana use as abuse, while completely
> ignoring the number one cause of drug addiction, alcohol.
> Ironically, by forcing medical marijuana patients onto other drugs,
> the bill could actually cost taxpayers money by forcing them to foot
> the tab for expensive alternative RX drug treatment (the state
> doesn't pay for medical marijuana expenses). Hopefully, Benoit's
> turkey will be killed in committee, as it was last year. In the
> meantime, constituents of the committee members are encouraged to
> complain to their state senators.
>