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"'It lowers our tax burden and takes the money out of the hands of murderers and thieves.'"

"You made the statement and so I invoke the FR right of "Prove it." Show me a government (fed or local) statistic of taxes being reduced by drug forfeitures."

I had to laugh when I saw that too. I'm in an area where they seize an awful lot of money. Our small town prosecutors office has even hired a part time attorney at the to do pretty much nothing but asset forfeitures. They blow that money like crazy. All of the prosecutors and a bunch of the guys in local law enforcement keep seized cars as "company cars." It pays for things like memberships to the gym for all of the prosecutors, their cell phones and lavish continuing legal education trips. They all have plush offices with cable TV. They are always buying some new fancy gadgetry like the laptops they all have in addition to their desktops, some giant $30,000 "smart screen" thing they bought a few months ago that every once in a while they'll lug into the courtroom for a trial but mostly they just watch ball games on it back in the office. The last thing they just bought were fancy bullet proof vests for all the attorneys even though they never go anywhere they might need them, just whatever crap they might think of that they can somehow or another claim is for "prosecutorial purposes," mostly they just blow it. The county still provides them a huge budget, and they have a nice slush fund to dip into any time they need it on top of that. The drug fund money doesn't pay any salaries but they figure out ways to provide special benefits with it and sometimes even bonuses.

They'll take anything from the $10 someone might have in his pocket when he gets busted for some minor offense on up to the huge loads of cash they pull from the highway. It gets split between the law enforcement agencies involved on the busts and the prosecutors. A lot of times there doesn't even seem to be any record of the forfeitures of smaller amounts of cash the cops take from people. I don't doubt some of the many stories I hear about officers pocketing the money.

Asset forfeiture is a racket. If they are going to do it, at least the lions share of it should go to the state and the county general fund, or in the case of money split with the feds it should come in as general revenue for the federal government. Law enforcement and prosecutors should get their budgets like other county and state (or federal) agencies. As it is at least in my state there is virtually no oversight as to how this money is spent and most of it is just blown on silly stuff or to enrich the lives of those doing the taking.