Comparing drug use between welfare-receiving arrestees and non-welfare-receiving arrestees

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) symbolized a comprehensive change to the nation's welfare system. Despite several provisions within PRWORA that focus on the use of illegal drugs, few studies have attempted to identify the prevalence of illegal drug use among welfare recipients. Moreover, no scholarly works have compared rates of drug use in welfare-receiving populations to those of non-welfare-receiving populations with an objective measure of drug use. In the current study, urine specimens were collected from 1,572 arrestees interviewed through Houston's Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program in 1999. Drug positive rates are compared between welfare-receiving arrestees (n = 116), non-welfare receiving arrestees living below the poverty level (n = 539), and non-welfare receiving arrestees living above the poverty level (n = 917). Welfare-receiving arrestees were more likely to be female, older, less educated, and to test positive for opiates and benzodiazepines than the other subgroups. Implications for welfare reform policy are discussed in light of the current findings.