Nikki Haley Pledges Not to Let Reality Get in the Way of Drug Testing
Via Alan Vanneman comes this ThinkProgess piece on Gov. Nikki Haley (R-S.C.), whose commitment to drug-testing recipients of unemployment insurance trumps her fealty to reality.
Haley…admitted today that she was wrong in asserting that half the people who applied to work at a nuclear facility in the state had failed drug tests, yet said she will still push to drug test the unemployed.
Haley has been advancing a plan to force jobless South Carolinians to pass a drug test before they can receive unemployment insurance, claiming an epidemic of substance abuse. The problem was so unbelievable, Haley said last month, that at the Savannah River nuclear site, "[of] everybody they interviewed, half of them failed a drug test."…
The Savannah River Site story has been central to Haley's drug testing push. "It's the reason you hear me focus so much on job training," Haley told the AP.
"I'm not going to say it anymore," Haley said, but nonetheless said that she'll continue her push for drug testing, even though the basis for it is entirely incorrect.
Back in 2002, Reason's Jacob Sullum pointed out that drug-testing is as irrelevant to job performance as it is ubiquitous. In 2008, Greg Beato explained "How Americans learned to stop worrying and love workplace drug testing."
And in January 2011, Reason.tv checked in on New Jersey pols who wanted to start drug-testing schoolkids as young as 11 years old: