Now, I try and read a lot of Drug War related news and blogs whenever I can; as Chris often tells me “I bleed SSDP”. I just like to be well informed on these issues, because I care so deeply about the harm the War on Drugs causes. One topic that seems to come up with decent frequency, but isn’t always noticed by a lot of the larger medias, is civil forfeiture of private goods. There’s this article out of Cleveland that really sums up the problem with civil forfeiture quite well. Civil Injustice strikes Ohio

Basically, the government (any level of it) can take your property (anything, money, your car, house, etc.) “merely on suspicion” that it was involved with criminal activity, or a result of criminal activity. In the case of the Cleveland story, it is over $400,000 in life savings of one couple. That’s a lot of money if you ask me. The police found a small amount of marijuana with the money, and took all of the money. The husband smoked the marijuana for medical reasons, for his arthritis, hip replacement and shingles. Here’s the kicker though, the couple didn’t get charged for the marijuana possession at all. That sounds like highway robbery to me.

I think it’s ridiculous that any level of government can take away your property unless they have proof. Whatever happened to protection from unreasonable search and seizure that the fourth amendment used to give us? I suppose, that there might me some case out there where this law would prove useful. But this one case is not enough to warrant such abuse of power. I think the concept of this law is too broad, and extremely dangerous because of this. What is to stop a corrupt government official from seizing property from someone he doesn’t like? All the official needs to do is find something suspicious about the person, and then he can take whatever property he wants to. I know it sounds a little far-fetched, but I think it is all too possible with what the War on Drugs causes already.

Tags: civil forfeiture, drug war, fourth amendment, seach and seizure, unreasonable