SLUH Progressive 1.4

Page 1

SLUH

The voice of the student left at St. Louis U. High

Friday, February 26, 2010

Volume 1, Issue 4

Class Warfare:

Missouri House passes prejudicial bill

Ben Minden-Birkenmaier Editor On Thursday, February 12th, the Missouri House passed a bill that would require people who receive certain types of government assistance to pass drug screening programs before they can recieve any government funds. This bill would also require lawmakers to pass drug screening or face certain penalties. Besides possible concerns about the constitutionality of the search process, critics have also raised questions as to the discriminatory nature of this bill. They point out that it targets mainly the impoverished, ignoring the fact that illegal drug usage is a problem that affects people of every social class. As articulated by professor Robert O. Keel of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, drug use is a society-wide problem that affects those on every economic level. The illegal use of many legal drugs, such as alchohol or nicotine is, in fact, much more prevalent in the middle and upper classes, and recreational use of prescription pharmaceuticals, as well as use of party drugs such as ecstasy and LSD, is a mainly middle-to-upper class problem. Creating a bill ostentatiously for the purpose of combatting drug use, but which only targets the poorest of the poor, is a discriminatory stereotype that ignores the realities of the larger drug use problem in America. Backers of the House bill make the argument that because welfare recipients accept public funds, they should be held to a higher standard when it comes to drug use. But this argument ignores the fact that every citizen of the United States is a beneficiary of public funds, and is indebted to society and to governmental infrastructure. For the first fifteen to twenty years of every citizen’s life, he or she drives on public roads, walks on public sidewalks, goes to schools that benefit from public

funding (yes, even SLUH students benefit from public funding in the form of the lunch milk program), and eats food, takes medicine, and uses products that are checked and guaranteed safe by the FDA, all without paying a cent in taxes. These services are provided by society, by the taxes of those around us, and we are therefore as indebted to this society as any welfare recipient. But we do not have to pass drug screenings to use these services. Under this bill, only a certain section of society would have to undergo screening in order to make use of certain public services: the poor, the ones most in need of these services. To only target that one section of society, while ignoring the same problems in other segments of society, is unfairly prejudicial. Some lawmakers argue that money from welfare, unlike other services, can be directly used to purchase illegal drugs. “We’re not going to subsidize drug use by welfare beneficiaries”, said Republican Speaker of the House Bryan Pratt, according to Missouri news outlet KansasCity.com. This sentiment makes a logical point, in theory: stop supplying drug users with public money, and they will either stop doing drugs so that they can have money to buy food, or they will die. Either way, public funds will not be paying for illegal drug use. In reality, however, the situation is much more complex. It is very uncommon for addicts of drugs such as heroin to be able to suddenly stop using drugs when they are no longer able to afford them. Instead, they more often react with violence, doing whatever they can, including stealing, to obtain money or goods that they can exchange for the drugs that they feel they need. They may start to rely on family members (who, themselves often at low income levels, cannot afford to support an addict), or, if their family is uncooperative, may threaten or use violence against them to obtain money for drugs. To

think that the drug problems of low income addicts can be solved simply by cutting off their funds is naive and short-sighted. The best proven, effective means of attacking drugs in low-income areas is the use of addiction counseling programs, in which trained counselors meet with addicts to fight their addiction and help them become fuctioning members of society. Missouri does have some state-run drug treatment programs, but, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the waiting lists for these programs are already lengthy. If lawmakers truly cared about combating the drug problem in low-income neighborhoods and making sure that federal money is not used to purchase illegal drugs, they should divert more funding to programs such as these, programs that focus on working with addicts to beat their addiction, rather than cutting them off from financial support. As it is, the current bill is nothing more than class warfare against the least fortunate members of our society.

Second place?

Falling behind in the green revolution

Joe Klein Editor

On June 26, 2009, the American Clean Energy and Security Act was passed by the House. While this bill is not yet law yet, coupled with many investments included in last year’s stimulus package, it shows a dramatic and long-overdue change in our country’s policies toward clean energy. This newfound awareness, on the cusp of a green revolution, gives us a window of opportunity to become a world

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