Drug testing required to get welfare?

I've noticed a number of my facebook friends signing on to the group "Making Drug Tests Required to Get Welfare" (here). The group now has 1.3 million fans.

So here's my question on this- welfare these days really only goes to people with kids. Say a single mom with two kids is on welfare, but is also an addict. So you take welfare away from the family. That means (if you're referring to welfare broadly) that the family would lose housing subsidies, food stamps and (maybe) direct cash payments (which are a pretty small proportion of welfare benefits). So now the kids, who are not on drugs, and who can't control whether their mom is on drugs, are homeless and hungry.

I understand the impulse to not reward people who sit around stoned and don't work, and you don't want welfare payments to go to buy drugs, but you can't very well cut off aid to parents and just give it to kids. And it's not much better to take kids away from their parents, even drug-addict parents, because the foster-care system is so messed up.

One thing to keep in mind is that the vast majority of what we call welfare comes in the form of direct housing subsidies (which get paid straight to the landlord) and food stamps, which come on an EBT card. While food stamp swipes can be "sold," it's awkward and inefficient (which is not to say that people don't do it). It's not that people are getting big "welfare checks" that they cash and then use to buy drugs.

I'm not saying that the system is functioning particularly well - there's definitely abuse, and in many areas a culture of dependency where most people in the neighborhood are on public assistance, few work, and it's expected that basically everyone should sign up. However, the solution is something a lot more nuanced than just to test and cut people off. In fact, I'd be pretty surprised if all 1.3 million fans abstained from drug use. Looking over the page, there seem to be a lot of people who seem less interested in reforming welfare than in dumping on welfare beneficiaries - people like Kimberly Harchuck, whose contribution to the discussion was "i cant even go to the store within the first 5 days of the month because everyones there swiping their damn ohio card. fuck that shit test them!!"