Earlier this year, the House of Representatives unanimously accepted an amendment aiming to halve funding for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s marijuana eradication efforts.

“Congress didn’t even think it was that controversial, which is terrific,” amendment author Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., beamed after the $9 million cut was accepted in a voice vote.

Now, the progressive Democrat is working with a libertarian Republican, Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, to finish the job.

“We had such strong support [in June], we figured why not just eliminate all funding,” Lieu tells U.S. News. “It’s a waste of federal resources and ends up driving up prices for Americans.”

The duo is pushing legislation that would block the DEA from financing its eradication efforts through civil asset forfeitures, in which authorities seize property they suspect is connected with criminal activity.

Civil asset forfeiture often evokes outrage, such as in May, when news outlets reported that DEA agents took $16,000 in cash from a 22-year-old Amtrak rider who was moving to California. The man was not charged with a crime.

The DEA Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program is a cooperative law enforcement initiative. It began in California and Hawaii in 1979, according to the DEA website, and last year featured the agency working with 128 state and local law enforcement agencies.

The agency boasts on its website that in 2014 the program “was responsible for the eradication of 3,904,213 cultivated outdoor cannabis plants and 396,620 indoor plants.” Authorities made 6,310 arrests connected to the program and seized more than $27.3 million in assets, according to the site.

The eradication program isn’t funded with a line-item appropriation in legislation that funds the DEA, so the June amendment cut funds from the DEA's general budget, with policy statements explaining why. By targeting the use of forfeited assets, the congressmen hope to scuttle additional eradication dollars.

Lieu says if his bill passes, “the supply of marijuana would increase because you won’t have the DEA actively trying to destroy marijuana plants.”

Amash took aim at civil asset forfeiture in a statement, saying it allows for “innocent people to have their property taken without sufficient due process.”

The Michigan Republican said the DEA having an incentive to self-fund through aggressive enforcement “is especially troubling given that the federal government should not be expending resources on marijuana prohibition – enforcement is a state-level issue, and an increasing number of states are deciding to back off from prohibition.”

Marijuana possession for any reason outside limited research is a federal crime, but local law in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and the nation’s capital allows adults to grow cannabis for recreational use (Washington state allows possession, but not home-grows for recreational use). A majority of states allow the use of medical marijuana or pot-derived compounds, with varying regulations for growing plants.

Dan Riffle, director of federal policies at the Marijuana Policy Project, praised the bill as a significant step toward walking back federal marijuana prohibition. “There’s a reason we don’t see headlines about cartels growing illicit fields of hops and barley or grapes in our national parks,” he said.

Lieu says he may try to slip the bill’s language into a larger piece of legislation, but that he sees no reason why it cannot pass on its own.

The DEA swatted at the proposal in a statement, saying the eradication program exclusively targets drug trafficking organizations and is worthy of continuation.

"Marijuana is the only major drug of abuse grown within U.S. borders and remains a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law," the statement said. "This program has proven effective in dismantling and disrupting drug trafficking organizations, has protected public and tribal lands from illegal marijuana grows, and in 2014 was responsible for the removal of almost 5,000 weapons from cannabis cultivators."

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The DEA is led by Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg, who recently replaced anti-marijuana hard-liner Michele Leonhart. In July, Rosenberg told U.S. News on a conference call that marijuana probably isn’t as dangerous as heroin, something Leonhart famously refused to concede. He later clarified heroin clearly is more dangerous.