• evergreen@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Does that make it OK to use the welfare money for drugs?

    Did Florida’s system just cut them off when they found them using or did they offer them assistance options for getting clean? S.F.'s system plans to offer them assistance getting clean while they continue to receive the welfare.

    • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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      8 months ago

      Florida spent $200,000 on testing and found 100 people, 2% of the total, to be using drugs. They spent more money on testing than if they’d just given welfare benefits to those 100 people.

      How do you consider that anything but a failure?

      • evergreen@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Yeah that does sound like a failure. But also different time different place. Was there a Fentanyl epidemic of this scale 10 years ago in Florida? If the treatment options save just one person’s life, is it still a failure? Should we just say “yep nothing works, there’s no solution to daily ODs on the streets of the city.”?

        • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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          8 months ago

          Not really when we’re just talking about food stamps. They paid $2000 for each of those benefit denials over what mostly amounted to marijuana usage. It was a net loss of $45,780 for the state.