The Nation - News from Oct. 6, 1986

The Drug Enforcement Administration is seizing so many assets from drug traffickers that it is taking in more cash and property than it spends in its annual budget. “We are seizing more than $1 million every day, and that has to hurt the drug traffickers,” DEA Administrator John C. Lawn said in Washington. For the fiscal year that ended at midnight last Tuesday, Lawn said DEA seized $373 million in assets. That compares with an annual budget of $363 million. Al Coward, chief of DEA’s financial intelligence section, said the seizures have ranged from a log cabin in Maine to $7 million in cash buried in Pennsylvania sewer pipes.