Montana lawmakers held a committee hearing on a bill that would require some low-income residents to be drug tested to qualify for welfare assistance.

Montana lawmakers held a committee hearing on a bill that would require some low-income residents to be drug tested to qualify for welfare assistance.

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Montana lawmakers held a committee hearing on a bill that would require some low-income residents to be drug tested to qualify for welfare assistance—a policy that has failed spectacularly in several other states.

HB 200, sponsored by Rep. Randy Pinocci (R-Sun River), was discussed Monday during a hearing of the House Human Services Committee.

Pinocci says that the bill is not intended to punish applicants, but to protect children. “It’s not all applicants, it’s for those showing past drug abuse or dependency,” Pinocci said during the hearing, according to a report by the Associated Press.

The bill requires applicants for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program—which helps recipients pay for food, shelter and utilities—to complete a questionnaire about drug abuse. Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) staffers administering the test would determine if there is a “reasonable likelihood that the applicant has a substance abuse disorder.”

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Those who test positive for drug use would be required to complete a 30-day drug treatment program before they would be eligible for benefits. Applicants who refuse to complete the questionnaire would be denied benefits, and cannot re-apply for benefits for 90 days.

The bill includes a clause allowing for a third party to accept payments for the children of parents who are ineligible for benefits under the drug testing policy.

The legislation also delegates the responsibility to adopt the specific regulations governing the procedures for carrying out the drug screening, drug testing, and substance abuse treatment requirements to the DPHHS.

George Paul, chairman of the Cascade County Republican Central Committee, said that the bill was meant to help, not punish, welfare recipients, according to the AP. “This is not an attempt to punish welfare recipients but to strengthen them,” Paul said.

Pinocci says the legislation was modeled after laws passed in Utah and Michigan. Gov. Rick Snyder recently signed into law a bill creating a one-year welfare drug testing pilot program.

Similar legislation has been passed by lawmakers in 12 other states, but in many cases the implementation of such policy has failed to achieve the results promised by lawmakers.

In Utah, only 12 applicants out of 466 tested positive in the state’s program from 2012 to 2013. In Tennessee, just one out of 802 welfare applicants tested positive since the state’s program was instituted on July 1.

A Kansas program criminalizing low-income people resulted in only 20 drug tests in the program’s first four months, a far cry from the 1,852 drug tests that were estimated for that time period. The $2.1 million cost of the program was to be offset by $1.1 million in savings from 1,475 people it was estimated would not qualify for benefits.

An analysis of a similar drug testing law in Florida by the New York Times found that the program “resulted in no direct savings, snared few drug users and had no effect on the number of applications, according to recently released state data.”

HB 200 awaits further action in the house committee.

Correction: The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program helps recipients pay for housing, food, and utilities. A previous version of this story stated that TANF helped cover only food costs. We regret the error.