It’s Piracy

Yachtsmen usually don’t command much sympathy from common folk, but the Coast Guard’s recent seizure of two dozen vessels, including a 133-foot yacht, after tiny amounts of drugs were found on board has touched a nerve. Like many boat owners, we think that the Coast Guard and the other federal agencies running the so-called “zero tolerance” campaign have gone overboard.

No one could possibly fault the objective behind “zero tolerance”--combating drug smuggling and drug use on the high seas. Under federal law it is clearly illegal to possess or import any amount of a controlled substance, no matter how minuscule. But the Coast Guard and the U.S. Customs Service are confiscating yachts, sailboats and fishing boats, as well as automobiles and other vehicles, in circumstances in which there’s not enough evidence to support a criminal prosecution. These seizures are out of proportion to the crime and offensive to the principle that individuals should be held criminally liable only for their own acts.

Until this new policy went into effect the Coast Guard routinely exercised its long-established right to board U.S.-flagged vessels for documents and safety checks, sometimes found contraband on board but did not seize a craft unless there was evidence of smuggling on a large scale. Smaller amounts of drugs were overlooked, though their possession was a technical violation of the law, or cases were referred to a U.S. attorney for prosecution. Now, under the guidelines adopted by the interdepartmental Drug Enforcement Task Force and put into effect a month ago, the government no longer overlooks anything. The 133-foot yacht Ark Royal was seized off Key West when less than a teaspoonful of marijuana was found in a trash can and a dresser drawer. More than 1,100 cars and trucks also have been confiscated, among them a $120,000 tractor-trailer on which officials found a single joint.

According to a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration, the rationale behind “zero tolerance” is to “attack the drug problem in this country where it should have been attacked a long time ago, at the consumer level.” We have often urged the government to find some way to reduce the demand for drugs, on the theory that controlling demand would curtail smuggling, but the indiscriminate confiscation of boats and cars seems to us the wrong tool for the job.

Seizure doesn’t punish drug users, only property owners who may not even know whether drugs are being used on their property. A careful owner --like Tomima Corp., the Irvine company that owns the Ark Royal--may forbid drug use on board but have no way to assure 100% compliance. Similarly, the owner of a car normally has no way of knowing what a passenger may be carrying in his pocket or his luggage. Who frisks a friend before offering a ride?

Prosecutors point out, of course, that federal law permits an owner to contest the seizure of his property and to raise his innocence as a defense in a forfeiture proceeding. Ultimately a hearing officer or a federal judge must decide whether the property should be forfeited. But the process can take months, and, while these procedures may be enough to establish due process, they offer little protection to commercial fishermen or truckers whose livelihoods depend on making full use of their property. Even Tomima, which seemed blameless, ended up paying $1,600 in fines and seizure fees to recover--or should we say ransom?--the Ark Royal.

We wonder, too, whether it makes sense to have the Coast Guard snooping through trash cans and dresser drawers for marijuana cigarettes when its patrol and emergency services have been drastically reduced by Reagan Administration budget cutbacks. The Florida Coast Guard district, for example, has cut its patrols in half and decommissioned several of its vessels. And if the Coast Guard, the Customs Service and the DEA have enough time on their hands to pursue these minor transgressors, why is it necessary to deploy the military services in the anti-drug fight, as the House and Senate have just voted to do?

Clearly the Reagan Administration needs to reconsider “zero tolerance.” We have no quibble with prosecuting anyone, on shore or afloat, who possesses drugs for his own use; then a judge or a jury will decide what’s tolerable. But confiscating boats and cars amounts to official piracy unless drugs are being smuggled in quantity.