This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, March 8th, 2016, and Caleb Brown.

When New Mexico eliminated civil asset forfeiture, it happened quickly and without much argument.

House Stratton, former Attorney General of New Mexico and former head of the Consumer Product

Safety Commission, says the message of forfeiture opponents was simple. Civil asset forfeiture is wrong. We spoke this

weekend. My experience is unique actually because when I was a legislator back in the

1980s I had a friend who was a legislator who went to the

Reagan Justice Department and became the director of the asset forfeiture

programs there and things were just starting at that time. I think the Fed's passed equitable sharing in 1984.

And so he was on board on that and the administration called me up, said, hey, we got to do this.

This will be a good thing for New Mexico and the state and it's a good way to get some money into law enforcement

we helped get this through the legislature we had to make some changes and sitting sitting here, I'd have to tell you,

I don't remember what they were.

It's been that long ago.

And it wasn't that big a deal.

It just seemed like another law enforcement tool

that we were going to put in place back in the 80s when we had

the war on drugs and the war on crime basically and so we did it and that was it and

we didn't think anymore about it. It went into place. I went on to the New Mexico

Attorney General's office from there. I was elected Attorney General. And while I was

at the AG's office, I don't remember it ever coming up.

I'm quite confident we never used it.

It was never an issue.

...