Mandated morality leads to legalized theft.

• Author: Schnepper, Jeff A.
• Position: Comprehensive Crime Control Act - Column

DRUG PHOBIA has taken over our society. Each year, Federal and local governments spend billions of dollars in a failing attempt to deny certain controlled substances to our populace. Note that I said controlled substances, not mind-altering drugs. Alcohol permeates our culture and Valium is available legally and easily to any suburban housewife with a headache and a friendly doctor.

The U.S. tried to control drugs once before in this century. We called it Prohibition, and it was a dismal failure. Its existence, however, provided the ways and means for organized crime to finance its explosive growth.

The same process is being repeated today, but instead of being called crime syndicates, they are labeled cartels. Where newspapers once headlined gang slayings and the killing of innocent people in their crossfire, today's newspapers cry and bemoan the slaughter of children in inner-city neighborhoods who fall victim to drug wars on their streets. The only things that have changed are the sophistication of the killing machines and the names of the drugs being sold.

Fear of drugs has denied marijuana to relieve the pain of those dying of cancer. Are lawmakers concerned that they may become psychologically addicted before they die or more so with publicly exposing the moral hypocrisy of "Reefer Madness" mania? Can the nation be so shallow that it prefers pain to tolerance. Are religious institutions so unstable and insecure that they require legal prohibition, rather than moral persuasion?

The fight against drugs, rather than drugs themselves, has bankrupted local and Federal budgets. More than 90% of crime is drug-related. This means that over 90% of prisons are filled with those incarcerated for drug crimes. Judicial systems and law enforcement agencies are drowning in a flood of drug-related activities. Public safety, personal security, and civil liberties have been sacrificed on the alter of zero tolerance.

In 1984, the Comprehensive Crime Control Act was enacted to broaden the Federal powers for seizure of assets in civil cases. In civil forfeitures, it is property, rather than a person, that is considered in violation of the law. Prosecutors only need show probable cause that the property was purchased from the proceeds of a crime or could have been instrumental in committing a crime. The act also created the Asset Forfeiture Funds. The Justice Department uses this account to collect and distribute proceeds from successful forfeiture actions...