Anyone who has ever worked with any type of addict will tell you that the worst thing you can do is enable that addict. When I did a Drug and Alcohol program whilst working in a residential rehab years ago, this was absolute dogma. A mantra we had to tell family and friends constantly.
Giving free money to addicts is the worst type of enabling. They don’t even have to work for their drug money, it just gets handed to them.
At least if they get put on the card they will have to make an effort to try and beat the system to get hold of some cash.

Not to minimise the problems associated with illegal drug addiction, they are real and extremely serious. What receives little attention, and from my experience is a bigger problem is alcoholism. One chap now in his fifties consumes on average 90 cans of beer, a bottle of cheap vodka along with cheap wine each week, I don't know how he does it, and is still alive, been that way for years. The blokes a qualified electrician, but I would not trust him to change a light bulb. Some time back he was on "unemployment", the fact is he was unemployable, so what did Social Security do, they moved him onto a disability pension, problem solved, or was the problem simply hidden away like so many others.

Steele you ask the question; But why should a refusal (of a drug test) end up with even more punitive outcomes?

Nothing to do with addressing the problem of drug addiction, but much to do with the philosophical mind set of those conservatives in government, these people must pay for their sins. They don't see drug addiction as a social problem, but rather as a criminal offence that must be punished.

Hey runner
"Shalom house in Perth have proved extremely successful which probably gets up the nose of the far less successful Government funded programs."

Looks like the founders still running his own drug operation;
- Only without the drugs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shalom_House

Don't get me wrong if it works it works obviously there's something we can learn;
But people paying $300 per week of their unemployment benefits to work full-time for free?
How can they look for regular work if they're working for this guy?
Am I missing something here?

Armchair Critic

Not sure of the financial amount that drug addicts have to pay. I did not think those on new start received $300 per week. You could guarantee though that Government run schemes cost the tax payer far in excess of $300 per week per person with far less success. The reason this guy needs to charge is because he gets no support from the Government. It cost something like $300 per day to keep someone in prison so Shalom house seems cheap. Also if it costs the addict something they are far more likely to take things seriously. Some addicts go from rehab to rehab and often are given other drugs to replace meth which still keeps them as an addict.

I'm with you there Belly. Anyone receiving the dole should be working for that dole, at the minimum wage. That should be about 5 days a fortnight working to say thanks for what the community is doing for them.

This would also make working a couple of days a week for cash in hand a lot harder to organise. A local small turf farmer was complaining he could not get anyone to work full time for him. He needs a couple of laborers, but can only get dole bludgers who will only work a couple of days a week, cash in hand only. This gives them more net than after tax full time wages.

The farmer lives in fear of getting trouble for employing these people, but it's that or close the farm.

I think you've all made plenty of good arguments for the cashless card.
But I have to admit I'm still not in any way not sold on it.

I'm not sure I can support stigmatising the loser of capitalism, the person who did not get the job.

I can see merit in many of your arguments, but I'm all about using a 'carrot on a stick' approach as opposed to a 'whip'.

I think we'd achieve more teaching people how to have better lives and not stuff up in the first place than using a whip on them when they're down, I could be wrong, but something tells me time will prove me right eventually.

I'm not sure I can put my finger on what bothers me about it.
Maybe just the whole idea of using the whip seems flawed and unethical, like it's an idea that in a broad sense can't be foolproofed.
- Like somehow, the idea still has the seeds of is own destruction built in.