TRAMPLING THE RIGHTS OF THE POOR

A new law in Michigan seeks to further punish, police and humiliate the
state's poor population. It sets a dangerous precedent for other states.

In October, Michigan will begin a pilot program to administer drug tests to
new welfare applicants at three locations. If the applicants test positive,
they will be asked to enroll for treatment. Those who refuse to be tested or
treated will lose their benefits. Already-eligible recipients at these
locations also will be randomly tested and treated the same way.

This move represents a violation of the basic civil rights of poor people
and reinforces the assumption that poverty equals drug addiction and
criminality. Since more than 25 percent of blacks and Latinos are poor, as
compared to 11 percent of whites, the growing discrimination against the
poor reflects both a class and a racial bias.

This new policy presumes all poor people are drug users until they are
proved innocent. It denies the reality of many welfare recipients who don't
use drugs.

It also gives unfair privilege to rich drug users, who don't get hauled in
by the state for random tests. Many people in this country receive state
benefits; why are only welfare recipients randomly tested?

Michigan is just looking for another way to cut more people from its welfare
rolls. Government social workers used to interrogate single mothers on
welfare about their dating and sexual behavior. Now they'll be doing it
about drug use.

Yes, some drug addicts are poor. And, yes, some poor people use drugs. It
should not be surprising that poverty sometimes encourages the desire for
numbness or escape, but this doesn't mean these individuals don't deserve
food and shelter. Nor does it mean they should be deprived of their
presumption of innocence.

This policy imposes a higher standard of morality for the poor than for the
rest of us. President Clinton admitted that he tried marijuana, but that did
not block him from rising in the ranks of national politics. Why should poor
people be persecuted for behavior that others with more financial resources
can readily conceal?

Michigan's new policy is only one of a number of new efforts at the state
and municipal levels around the country that serve to criminalize the poor.
They include laws against public loitering or begging and public-nuisance
ordinances directed specifically at the homeless. They also include
anti-gang policies, such as the one just passed in the Chicago suburb of
Cicero, which bans anyone with a gang affiliation from the town.

Some people argue that taxpayers should not subsidize the habits of drug
users. If someone is a convicted drug user, fine. But to treat every welfare
applicant as a drug user is to shred their civil rights.

And if the concern is really about squandering tax dollars, there are bigger
culprits than welfare recipients. Companies receive more than $100 billion a
year in tax breaks and subsidies from the public. But do the CEOs have to
pass a drug test before they get public money?

It's morally indefensible to criminalize, humiliate and treat as suspect a
whole sector of the population simply because it is low-income and dares to
ask for public assistance.

Poverty is punishment enough for its innocent victims. To erode their basic
rights as citizens should be an outrage to all of us.