Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Drugs and the Welfare State

Betel is a Christian community that helps people break their addictions to drugs and alcohol. They started in Spain, but when they branched out into England, they found that they were having very little effect. Until they banned people in their centres from claiming disability benefit. After the free supply of money, simply for being addicted to drugs, ended, the people had far more incentive to work and to come off drugs. And they could and did and do work - they were only "disabled" because they were always taking drugs.

Simply put, the way the welfare state is set up essentially subsidises drug addiction and makes it much harder for people to come off drugs.

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