By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 12 years ago

Florida Gov Rick Scott refuses to pee in a cup

Rick Scott, the unpopular Florida Gov who recently signed a law requiring welfare recipients to submit to a drug test before receiving their benefits, got a taste of his own medicine yesterday when The Daily Show‘s Aasif Mandvi confronted him at a press conference and demanded a urine sample.

It’s good joke–and it could even become a real policy initiative. Apparently, Georgia State Rep. Holcomb has introduced a bill requiring all state lawmakers to be drug-tested as well, saying “if required for the poor, we [lawmakers] need to do it, too.” Sounds fair. Alternatively, of course, we could just end the war on drugs, stop criminalizing poverty, and demand our lawmakers quit wasting time with such nonsense.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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