I’ve written about police seizures in the past but the story I just read brings my hate of them into even starker contrast.

The DEA pays clerks at travel agencies to find travelers who make short duration trips, one-way trips, trips paid for in cash, trips made by people with past criminal records, and various other “flags”. They then pull said traveler aside and ask if they can search their luggage. If refused they bring in dogs to sniff for drugs.

If what happens next doesn’t disturb you then you should probably stop reading my blog. If you have money, they take it and say see you later. No charges. No questioning. Just snatch and grab.

By the way drug sniffing dogs are awful at their job. They fail more than they succeed and in a statistic that tells it all, they fail more often with minority suspects. That clearly means the dogs are taking cues from their handlers to “report” a positive. That’s not my point but I hope you’re disturbed by it in any case.

The key here is that they are not interested in stopping crime, in making your neighborhood safe, in protecting and serving. They are interested in taking money, no matter its source. There are numerous cases where they took the money and after a long legal proceeding gave some of it back. Some of it!

The drug trade does a good job of making drug manufacturers and dealers wealthy but the drug interdiction trade does a better job of paying the salaries of tens of thousands of government workers who would otherwise be unemployed, or horror of horrors, actually protecting and serving rather than terrorizing and stealing!

There’s no excuse for this, none. I don’t believe in the War on Drugs at all. I think all drugs should be legal. Don’t get me started. All drugs are legal, just certain brands not controlled by the pharmaceutical industry are illegal. But even if you do believe drugs are harmful and we should be preventing their distribution I find it hard to believe you would be on board with taking money from drug dealers and letting them go without even trying to convict them. All that does is make them go back and get more drugs! The loss of cash is an operating expense.

The drug interdiction agents are actually incentivized to not charge drug dealers. They are much better off taking the money and letting the dealers go back and make more money which agents can then steal, I mean seize, at a later date!

Drug money has corrupted our government and our law enforcement agencies at the highest level. They are more interested in making, I mean seizing, money than in stopping crime!

Do you still believe in the War on Drugs?

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Gray Horn
Next Release: For the Gray