Drugs were identified with the counter culture movement that challenged the status quo in the early 1970s. The challenge culminated in President Nixon’s declaration of War on Drugs in 1972 and has been supported by every administration since.

By 1988, a crime wave rose to prominence on the political radar that paralleled the intensity of the crime wave that preceded the repeal of prohibition.

The election of 1988 could have been the end of the crime wave if drugs had been legalized as alcohol had been in 1932. There were no major threats to our national security to complicate issues.

However, there were two jokers in the deck that revived and intensified the War on Drugs. One was Willy Horton and the other was the expansion of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970.

In 1987, Willy Horton raped a woman and killed her fiancé after going AWOL from a prison furlough while doing a life sentence in a Massachusetts. Michael Dukakis was the governor of Massachusetts at the time.

It was the Democratic primary and ensuing elections that brought Willy Horton’s crime spree to national attention in 1988. He became the symbol of soft on crime used by the elder George Bush to defeat Michael Dukakis.

The impact of Willy Horton in the presidential election incited a rash of national legislation characterized by eliminating furloughs, reducing gain time, increasing sentences and the construction of prisons, much of which was passed prior to the election. “Get tuff on crime” was born.

Both Prohibition and the War on Drugs were fought with tax dollars. The twist comes in that drugs and crime generates a separate revenue stream for law enforcement..

This augmentation started with the drug-related civil asset forfeiture law of 1970 and its follow on legislation in 1978. The probable cause standard of the forfeiture laws relieves the government of the burden of proving anyone's criminal guilt to obtain a forfeiture judgment on property.

This accommodation to the War on Drugs is reaching or has reached a point of dependence on the proceeds of crime for some government agencies. In 1999 alone, approximately $300 million of the $957 million that the Treasury and Justice Department funds took in went back to the state and local departments that helped with the seizures.