It became somewhat about money, but that's a fairly recent development in policing in general -- it's not much different from allowing the executive branch to k

It became somewhat about money, but that's a fairly recent development in policing in general -- it's not much different from allowing the executive branch to keep all or part of other various fines. But there's nowhere near as much money coming from seizure as is coming from the government to fund the manpower and equipment used to do the seizing. The enforcement divisions of the DOJ seize less than 2B annually. (That's FBI/DEA/ATF/etc combined.) Their combined budget is ~27B. Seizure (and prosecution in general) is more a problem due to perverse incentive schemes: Police are incentivized to seize money not so much to have the money directly, but to have those seizures show up on their performance reviews. Not unlike prosecutors trying to rack up convictions or traffic cops trying to fill ticket quotas. The Drug War is much more about race.