Insofar as urine testing goes, I would feel a darn sight happier knowing that the guy operating the transport that I'm travelling on has avoided any sort of mind altering substance because of the possibility of a test. I would think that that would also apply to the majority of people working around potentially dangerous machinery - why should anyone be put at risk because one person can't control an addiction? If you want to talk about rights, fine, but I think that the right to work and travel in a safe environment trumps the right of one particular person to put others at risk because they have been rendered less fit to perform a task due to drink or drugs.

Same goes for those suspected of DUI. I've seen quite a number of people in my lifetime, including my own father, who didn't show any sign of being drunk, even when they had consumed well over the legal limit. In this day and age of cost cutting there ain't going to be any chance of cash strapped authorities setting up such a cumbersome machinery to prove DUI. I presume that anyone has the right to refuse to give a breath sample but I do know that, if that is the case, they will probably spend more time in the police station than might otherwise be the case if they had not been drinking. You makes your choice - two minutes blowing into a bag and then saying goodnight to the policeman, if you're under the limit and hadn't broken any other laws, or a few hours standing on your rights. I know which I would prefer.

Welfare recipients are a whole different ball game. Actually, I can sympathise with gnu's feelings there. When I was on supplementary benefit, as it was called at that time in the UK, there wasn't enough money for me to have a bottle of beer, let alone booze or drugs enough to show up in testing. If this is happening I would want to know how people taking money from the public purse could possibly buy non essentials like that. I certainly would not be happy at the idea of supporting someone else's habit in that way.

If I needed extra money for things like new shoes for my kids I basically had to go through a third degree interview and was quite often made to feel that I was incapable of managing my money and that I was a total drain on public resources. That was one of the things that got me working out ways to get off of welfare and able to support my family. If some people on welfare are indulging heavily in drink or drugs it would seem to imply that either they have another source of income, in which case they shouldn't be on welfare, or that their family are going without. In either case, yes, I can see a good reason to test, since they could be seen to be taking public money under false pretences, whatever their circumstances might be.

It all depends, IMO, on just how far public interest outweighs personal freedom, if, in fact, it does. Where does the line get drawn? I'd say that, if you asked a hundred people that question you would have a hundred different lines.