How is civil forfeiture a thing?

I’m not so persuaded by your disparate impact worries, but you’re right that I oppose the laws wholeheartedly. From either prince or pauper, the state should not take property without a better showing than mere preponderance of the evidence. At a minimum, we should require a criminal conviction. The whole idea of forfeiture is to take property because it was used in a crime, and now the state wants to do that even when it can’t prove the crime happened.