George Leef’s latest Forbes column highlights positive developments in the Land of Enchantment.

Civil asset forfeiture is one of those issues where Americans of all political persuasions grasp the truth that government has grown far too powerful and arrogant, with officials serving their own interests rather than those of the public. Some officials have badly overreached, using their power to engage in what Frederic Bastiat called “legal plunder” and thereby awakened a huge cross section of the populace to the fact that government is often more about helping itself than about serving the public interest.

The silver lining to civil asset forfeiture is that it helps people to understand that, as Albert Jay Nock argued in the 1930s, the state is our enemy. (His book Our Enemy, the State is as pertinent today as when he wrote it in 1935.)

In particular, state legislatures have responded to this abuse and New Mexico is on the verge of a complete turnabout. Both chambers of the state legislature have unanimously passed HB 560 sponsored by Representative Zachary Cook. Cook is a Republican, and the GOP controls the House 37 to 33, but the Senate is controlled by the Democrats, 24 to 17. Nevertheless, it passed without a single no vote and now awaits Governor Martinez’s signature.

The key provisions of the bill include that no citizen will suffer forfeiture prior to conviction of a criminal act, that proceeds from forfeitures in those cases will go into the state’s general fund and not into the coffers of the seizing agencies (thus removing the temptation for, as the Institute for Justice puts it “policing for profit,”) and that state and local law enforcement agencies will not be able to get around the state law by resorting to the federal “equitable sharing” law.

This is quite remarkable. Civil asset forfeiture has been a “growth industry” for many police departments around the country, allowing them to pad their budgets at the expense of hapless individuals. That is going to come to a screeching halt in New Mexico, and other states have similar bills pending.