Utah Spent $26K to Ferret Out Welfare Drug Users, Found Nine
Last year, Utah joined the handful of states that have passed laws mandating drug tests for people seeking welfare benefits. To avoid constitutional challenges, the state created a screening process to come up with a reasonable suspicion that certain welfare applicants were using drugs.
But preliminary data reported by the Salt Lake Tribune shows that of 4,425 people screened for drug use after seeking aid, only 813 were deemed to be at high risk of drug use, only 394 were actually subjected to drug testing, and of those, only nine were denied benefits because they tested positive and five are undergoing treatment.
. .
The SASSI Institute claims its diagnostic test is 94% accurate at detecting people with a high probability of substance abuse, but the Utah numbers belie those claims. Of those assessed as likely drug or alcohol abusers by the test, only 1% actually tested positive for drugs. In the best case — assuming that everyone who abandoned the aid application process or didn’t show up for a drug test was actually using drugs — the predictive value of the SASSI test was under 50%.
More: Utah Spent $26K to Ferret Out Welfare Drug Users, Found Nine