SCOTUS rules unanimously on asset seizure/excessive fines

[SteyrAUG]

Life must be good - No full auto anything in my collection. I buy and sell horses and sometimes I am traveling with large sums of cash to other States, but have never run into any problems...yet. But maybe a guy with a cowboy hat driving an F250 Super Duty Crewcab towing a horse trailer doesn't scream Drug Dealer?

So sometimes it's a Mercedes with a dozen MP5s in the trunk. And when making such purchases, cash is king as nobody wants to pay the 2% merchant service fee. Thankfully 99/100 times they were purchased from a LE agency so that's kind of a clue that I might not be on their Most Wanted list.

[OH58D]

Sometimes its down in Louisiana (where my better half hails from) on I-10 between Lake Charles and Baton Rouge. Some years back Louisiana State Police and Parish Sheriffs would pull over vehicles for having their fog lights on during the daylight hours. Turns out it was a signal used by drug mules to signal other drug runners about the presence of LE along the highway up ahead. My wife's sister has been stopped numerous times because of it. She's not a mule but a senior exec for Conoco-Phillips.

Classic Louisiana:

[sundance435]

Interdiction has not done very much, if anything, to stop the flow of drugs.

Asset forfeiture has corrupted many officers as well as many agencies. It is telling when state agencies facing budget crunches limit the miles their road troops can drive each day, but let the interdiction heroes do anything they want.

Interdictions amount to a drop in a 55 gallon drum, but if you're going to have a "War on Drugs", you still have to do it. It forces cartels to figure interdictions into their calculations and can cause mistakes elsewhere. My guess is we'd be even more awash in drugs if the cartels knew we weren't doing interdictions. Personally, I couldn't care less if someone wants to shoot up or smoke the hard stuff, as long as it doesn't impact me and I'm not paying for it in some other way - thin the herd.

[jsbhike]

Making something forbidden often makes it popular.