In general, I think people can more efficiently allocate their money than a central government planning group can. If an aid recipient wants to buy cigarettes or a drink with it, that’s not what I’d choose, but if they’re going to, I want them to do so as efficiently as possible.
Let's look at it this way: Government just provides the essentials (what essentials consist of is to debate but still can be setup by an expert committee) and people can get whatever they want once they get a job (and thus reducing the aid they need).
Because some things won't be deemed essential. And now someone has to arbitrate that. And so the government is now making decisions about where you are allowed to live. What constitutes essential housing? Are you allowed to live in non-essential housing and "top up" or do you get stuck with what the expert committee has decided?
We have government-owned public housing in my country, and it has many flaws, in practice. Long wait-lists to get an apartment, no choice of where your apartment is, and little in the way of power to act should you need to move or have something fixed.
If they were given cash equivalent to the value of that housing on the market (a program we've been shifting towards but which lacks funding) then they can rent a house where they need it. Got a job? Move. Landlord is neglectful? Well, at the very least you can probably move.
There's a middle ground, of course. In the case of housing in particular, it might be reasonable to mandate a proportion of social assistance cash payments be spent on rent, should a person end up interacting with homelessness services. (But this is of course assuming you actually can rent anything with that... sometimes not.)
One issue we see here in Ireland is that there seems to be no path to create laws that force land developers to allocate sufficient space to affordable (they read "affordable" as "less profitable") housing. Since they have pockets deep enough to help their friends get elected, there is not much surprise such things tend to not happen. Ireland's ranked voting system is great for weeding out extremism, but doesn't work as well for preventing regulatory capture.
These feel like sadistic ways to punish people for being poor.
I think I read that we estimate about 1% (and that's at the upper range) of foodstamps/SNAP/EBT/etc are used for fraud. It's a pretty small number but I think a lot of people think it's much higher. We tend to over index on these things and forget to consider the 99% that are being used probably as intended.
It's everyone's best interest to make sure that they get on board of a better life as quickly as possible. You spread the money on multiple fronts, it just slows down and wastes the money.
For sure we can debate what's "essential" but I really don't think cigarettes and alchohols are among them, unless stapled by a medical doctor.
Taking agency away from them, by forbidding behavior you deem inappropriate.
The most effective programs are the conditional cash transfer ones and they are extremely successful in bootstrapping families out of poverty even in the poorest places of the poorest countries, right? For the Brazilian one I am most familiar with, it was estimated that for every dollar invested in it, 2.5 would return to the government as taxes in 10 years.
I personally find that even at a high income relative to the general populations a few drinks at the end of the day can absolutely better my life. If I was disenfranchised I can only imagine this would be even more true.
I would hope that if someone was giving money to disadvantaged people on my behalf that would also include the ability to buy themselves a drink or a joint in states where that's allowed.
I know this because it has been explained to me in detail by my wife, who is a case worker at the county welfare office.
Here's something to consider: Nicotine alleviates the symptoms of schizophrenia which affects 1% of the population. https://www.brainfacts.org/archives/2008/smoking-and-schizop...
So put yourself in their shoes. They need financial aid because their mind is broken. One of the few things that calms the screaming voices is a cigarette. Nicotine acts on the brain in various ways and it literally alleviates the symptoms of a severe disease.
So yes they need financial aid but it's really arrogant that you're so sure you know better than them on how to spend it. You're also not giving them a learning experience. Remember that the goal is for them to dig themselves out of their hole. By not allowing them to succeed or fail you aren't setting them up for the day they are financially independent.
With this in mind you can look back at all the judgements made on the mentally ill. It's common for people to think "Why are they buying cigarettes if they don't have a home!".
Turns out that viewpoint was wrong all along. The ability to think at all is indeed a top priority, perhaps higher than housing or food. It turns out that the crazy person using money they receive to buy smokes wasn't making poor choices after all. They were doing the one thing that gave them a chance at clarity of thought. Understandable. Yet we were judging the way they spent their money the whole time. We were wrong and we should take that lesson and continue calling out overly simplistic viewpoints along the lines of what you said above.