Legislative Malpractice in Drug-Testing Welfare Policies: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health Data

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This cross-sectional study took two theoretical persectives – legislative malpractice and evidence-based practice – to investigated whether recipients of federal welfare programs are more likely to use illicit drugs than their peers who do not participate in public assistance after controlling for many predictors, including poverty.

Methods: Extracting five cross sections from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), this research divided a large sample (N = 47,351) into two groups: an intervention group (N = 11,937) made of households receiving one or more government benefits, and a comparison group composed of households not on welfare (N = 35,414). The Taylor Series Linearization method was used to generate accurate point estimates in complex sample multivariate logistic regression.

Results: The analysis generated small odds ratios of 1.325 and 1.309 for past month illicit drug use and past year illicit drug use, respectively.

Discussion: These findings call on lawmakers at local, state, and federal levels to revisit the rationale for the design and implementation of drug testing policies in social welfare.

KEYWORDS:

• War on drugs
• illicit drugs
• welfare receipt
• legislative malpractice
• evidence-based practice
• complex sample design
• Taylor series linearization

Notes

1. Luis W. Lebron v. Secretary, Florida Department of Children & Families, No. 11–5258 (11th Cir. Feb. 26, 2013).

2. Marchwinski v. Howard, 319 F.3d 258 (6th Cir. 2003).