Many years ago, I read:
Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994)
by James Bovard.
He is from the libertarian side of the right. I still remember one story he told. A man had a very expensive, wooden speed boat. This same kind of boat (cigar boat?) was used by drug dealers. This was in Florida.
Authorities (DEA?, Coast Guard?) boarded his boat, took axes to it to see if their were any drugs in hollow panels of the boat. (My rudimentary understanding is that hollow panels increase buoyancy). They pretty much demolished his very expensive boat. They did not find any drugs.
He asked for compensation. He sued for compensation. Lawyers are expensive. I don’t think the suit had been resolved at the time the book was published.
Bovard was of the “we lost the war on drugs, let’s not lose our freedom too” school of thought. I’m not sure I buy that fully, but I do understand the argument. Anyway, he writes a hard-hitting book (all items picked from one side of the ledger).
I wouldn’t be surprised if most asset forfeiture are about drug ALLEGATIONS.
I once had a phone call at the business I used to own, the caller was with the fish and wildlife department. He told me that my boat, a sixteen foot Larsen deep V hull with a one hundred horsepower engine, had been found about a hundred miles from my home. He read off the hull number, engine serial number etc. and all matched my records perfectly. The strange thing was that my boat was sitting on a trailer in my yard and had not been moved in months. I told the man that I was certain it was not my boat and that was the last I heard from them. I still have not figured it out, some people asked why I didn’t go and claim the boat since everything matched but I was not about to go near it, I figured it had been used in drug trafficking, I just don’t know how someone could have an identical boat and motor with matching registration numbers and serial numbers.