PUFF DADDY

A Former Police Chief Calls the Drug War a "Joke" and Believes Dime
Bags Should Be Sold Like Cigarettes

When Jerry Cameron was chief of police in Fernandina Beach in 1988,
he believed so strongly in the war on drugs he was willing to go to
jail to fight it. Cameron was threatened with arrest after refusing
to release a juvenile he'd arrested on felony cocaine possession
charges. He wanted state child welfare authorities, who called the
shots in juvenile justice matters, to take the boy to a detention
center. The agency countered that since the youth wasn't a threat, he
should be released to his parents. But Cameron believed letting the
kid go would send the wrong message -- and cede a key battle in the
drug war. He held fast until the agency backed down and took the
juvenile into custody.

In an interview with the Fernandina Beach-News Leader about the
incident, Cameron vented his frustration over the drug scourge. "If
we can't turn this thing around, we might as well disband law
enforcement agencies," he said. The money saved, he added, could be
refunded to taxpayers "so they can buy bars for their windows and
guns to protect themselves."

Cameron is still as blunt about the drug war as he was 20 years ago,
but he's no longer fighting on the same side. Speaking before the
Chamber of Commerce's Downtown Council last month, Cameron derided
the War on Drugs as a colossal failure.

"I'm here to tell you that the emperor has no clothes," Cameron told
the group of power suits. "This is such a bad policy it's almost a joke."

Cameron doesn't just believe the drug war has failed. He thinks it
has damaged the nation's democracy, leading to an increasingly
militarized police force prone to stomping on civil liberties. While
this tactical fighting force is ostensibly trying to rid the nation
of drugs, Cameron says the lure of money, power and crime-fighting
gewgaws breeds its own addiction.

"The bureaucracy needs the dealers in order to justify its continued
existence and growth," Cameron says. "And the dealers need the
bureaucracy to keep the competition down and the prices up."

It's radical position for a former chief of police and self-described
"drug warrior." But after drinking the Kool-Aid on drug interdiction
during his 17 years in law enforcement, Cameron has concluded the
drug war is worse than a failure. It's a fraud.

He's not alone in his observations. As a member of Law Enforcement
Against Prohibition (LEAP), Cameron keeps company with more than
5,000 current and former law enforcement officials, DEA agents,
judges and corrections officers who have joined since the group was
founded in 2002. LEAP's goal is nothing less than the legalization of
all drugs - marijuana, LSD, crack, even heroin. The group doesn't
claim that legalization will stop people from getting high, only that
it will take the drug trade away from criminals. In turn, the group
proposes taxing drug sales and using the money to fund treatment
programs and drug abuse education.

LEAP maintains a roster of 150 speakers -- Cameron is one -- and
recently hired a full-time Washington lobbyist to press for drug
legalization. LEAP works internationally as well. In 2006, Cameron
was invited to speak in Amsterdam at the annual conference of the
libertarian Reason Foundation, as well as at a Dublin conference
hosted by Ireland's largest drug treatment center.

Cameron admits that many people are initially shocked to see a former
police chief advocate for legalization. But he says no one else is
better equipped to make the argument - because no one else knows the
story from the side of law enforcement.

"There are people a whole lot smarter than me who will figure out how
to go about it, but the one thing I am convinced of is that
prohibition is causing a lot of damage," says Cameron. "I'm not a
supporter of drug use. I'm just a supporter of good public policy.

The "War on Drugs" dates back to the culture wars of 1971, when
President Richard Nixon called drugs "public enemy number one" and
vowed to wage an "all-out offensive against that deadly enemy." His
offensive offered convenient cover for an administration known for
retaliating against enemies. Many of the drug users Nixon went after
smoked pot, and opposed him and the war in Vietnam.

Whether or not the drug war has ever deserved more credibility than
it had during the Nixon administration, it has certainly had the
sanction - and the financial support - of the federal government.
Since 1971, state and federal law enforcement agencies have spent a
trillion dollars fighting drugs. More than 9 million people have been
arrested for non-violent drug offenses in the past five years.
Prisons are full, courtrooms are clogged, and racial inequities are
endemic. Yet the No. 1 cash crop in the United States is marijuana,
with an estimated annual revenue of $32 billion. The percentage of
drug abusers hasn't changed since war was declared. In 1971, 1.3
percent of the population was addicted to drugs - the same as today.
And even as costs associated with the drug war have soared, drug
prices have plummeted, because supplies remain plentiful and drug
purity has increased.

Despite Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign, it remains easier for
children to buy drugs than beer or cigarettes, says Cameron: "If you
didn't know where to get marijuana and you wanted to get some
tonight, who would you ask? The children."

Although calls for the outright legalization of drugs have remained
on the fringes of policy debate, criticism of the drug war has come
from some pretty high places. In 1993, two federal judges in New York
City told the New York Times that "the emphasis on arrests and
imprisonments, rather than prevention and treatment, has been a
failure." They announced they were withdrawing from the effort. That
same year, according to The Nation, 50 of the country's 680 federal
judges refused to hear drug cases. Also in 1993, Surgeon General
Jocelyn Elders commented that the crime rate would be reduced if
drugs were legalized. Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger
said the War on Drugs amounted to "a vague injunction to stop drug
traffickers." And former Secretary of State George Shultz pointed out
that "We're not really going to get anywhere until we take the
criminality out of the drug business and the incentives for
criminality out of it."

But there is no broad national consensus for legalizing drugs. There
is little doubt that U.S. citizens ingest mind-altering substances at
alarming rates -- spending some $60 billion a year on drugs -- or
that addiction has wreaked havoc on lives and families. To many, the
idea of legalization means opening the floodgates to a narco nation.
There is also a fervent, almost ideological conviction in most law
enforcement agencies that the drugs are the enemy. Having seen so
many deaths - O.D.s and homicides - linked to the trade, most cops
believe it is the illegal substances themselves, not the drug trade,
that must be snuffed out.

LEAP contends, however, that the major crime associated with drug use
would stop if drug cultivation and sales were taken out of the hands
of criminals. If the government could control the purity and the
product, and license dealers, it could use taxes to regulate it and
divert part of the money to pay for drug treatment programs. From a
purely economic standpoint, the theory makes some sense. Drug
treatment programs cost a fraction of what drug enforcement costs,
and there is almost no product that compares to illegal drugs in
profitability. Processed cocaine available in Columbia for $1,500 a
kilo is sold on the streets of the United States for $66,000 a kilo.
Heroin that costs $2,600 a kilo in Pakistan is sold retail in the
United States for $130,000. As a recent episode of PBS program
"Frontline" observed, "No agricultural enterprise in the world
operates with the same profit margins." For Cameron, keeping drugs
illegal is tantamount to enriching lawbreakers.

"We are dealing with a business that creates $500 million a year in
revenue, and we have turned it over to criminals," he says. "They
decided when it is produced, how it is produced, what to [produce],
when and how to transport it, who gets it, how much, how pure it is
and how much it costs. We don't have a thing to say about it. And
guess what? Every bit of it is tax-free. How would you like to have
that kind of business?"

At 6-foot-4, 230 pounds, with gray hair and a slack face, Jerry
Cameron has the easy authority of someone who is used to giving
orders. His voice is deep and resonant, with the unhurried gait of a
Southern storyteller. He seems more Mayberry than RoboCop, but he
says at one time he believed in wholeheartedly in commando policing
to combat drugs.

"I was one of the most enthusiastic drug warriors there was," he
says. "For a long time, I fervently and deeply believed we could
arrest our way out of this problem."

Cameron began his career in 1978 as a Richland County sheriff's
deputy assigned to Irmo, S.C., before being hired away by the Irmo
Town Council two years later to be chief of a new one-man police
department. Although it was small-town police work, Cameron quickly
distinguished himself as a leader unafraid to try new things. In one
of his first newspaper interviews, Cameron vowed to tackle what he
called "the youth problem" -- drugs, alcohol and vandalism. He noted
that 75 percent of crime in the town was caused by juveniles. But
Cameron didn't want to criminalize young people -- he wanted to turn
them around. Working with parents, he handed out punishments to the
youthful offenders. They worked off the damage they'd caused by
picking up litter, washing the sole Irmo police car, or cutting the
lawn outside the Town Hall.

Within three years, Cameron built the force to six officers. He
purchased a radar device, which he had to set up on a portable table
because radar equipment was still in its infancy. He bought a
microcomputer and programmed it to hold the town's arrest records. He
hired a karate expert to train the department in the use of nunchakus
as an alternative to deadly force.

Ray Nash, sheriff of Dorchester County, S.C., for the past 10 years,
worked for Cameron in the early '80s and replaced him when he took
the job as chief in Fernandina Beach. He calls Cameron a "genius" and
a "visionary," and says his unique leadership style was evident in
his decision, in 1980, to buy a manual transmission Volkswagen Rabbit
as the town patrol car. The first car was purchased in the midst of
the gas crisis, but as Cameron added officers to the force, he
purchased more Rabbits. Irmo became known nationally as the town that
chased down criminals in VW Rabbits.

"Everyone thought it was funny," remembers Nash, "until we got out
and deployed them. They were the fastest thing in the world. They
were quick, fuel-efficient - That's why they called them Rabbits."

The University of North Florida invited Cameron and his Rabbit to the
school to talk to other police officers about downsizing patrol cars
to save on energy. School officials were so impressed that they
invited Cameron back. When a police chief position opened in
Fernandina Beach, UNF arranged for Cameron to interview. And the
school told him that if the Fernandina job didn't work out, he could
have a full-time teaching job.

In 1984, Cameron left Irmo to move to Fernandina Beach, a city twice
as big with a police force of 28. The City Commission hired Cameron
because they believed he would bring a compassionate, human touch to
the job, he says. But a poll by the Fernandina Beach News-Leader
showed a skeptical public. Some 99 percent of respondents to a
newspaper poll said they thought the city should not have hired the
new chief from outside the department. Cameron gradually won over
most of his critics, but he also earned a reputation for his unusual
law enforcement leadership style. He quoted Plato and Aristotle at
morning meetings. He offered wisdom gleaned from the authors that
filled his bookshelves: Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, Descartes, Ayn
Rand. He visited the local schools to address students. And he
impressed both black and white leaders with his caring.

"He was real sincere about the problems that exist in our town,
whether in the Afro-American community or any other part of our
community," says former City Commissioner Charles Albert. "He was a
very humane type of person. He was always a nice person to converse
with, to talk to about problems."

Fernandina Beach Commissioner Ron Sapp agrees. "One of the things
that made him so special was that he not only talked about putting
people in jail, he also talked about ideas, about why crimes are
committed," recalls Sapp. "He thought outside the normal realm of thinking."

Cameron also had a sense of humor. In October 1985, he took two
Fernandina Beach police officers back to Irmo to compete in that
city's okra-eating contest.

Having worked with Cameron, Sheriff Nash says he has learned early on
to appreciate his difference. He also learned not to underestimate him.

"I would never compete with him to this day," says Nash. "I don't
dare. If he is going to challenge me, he has done his homework. He
has invested the time and effort for preparation -- and he knows he
is going to come out on top." In 1985, though, the okra trophy stayed
in South Carolina.

Cameron joined the Fernandina force in 1984, shortly after the onset
of the crack cocaine epidemic. An open-air drug market took root in
the predominately black neighborhood of Ninth Street in downtown
Fernandina Beach. Cameron recalls lines of cars, driven by whites,
cruising up and down Ninth as black dealers stood on the street
hawking their wares.

Pressed to come up with a solution to the problem, Cameron devised
"Operation Pressure Point." The approach was similar to the "Broken
Window" theory of policing popularized by New York City's Mayor
Rudolph Giuliani in the mid-1990s. The police in Fernandina Beach
boosted their presence through aggressive interaction with citizens
in problem areas. Dressed in full tactical gear -- black jumpsuits,
flak vests, and firearms slung over their shoulders -- officers would
pull over cars for minor traffic violations, then seek to escalate
the encounter until there was probable cause for a search of the
vehicle. While one officer checked the license, the other would
eyeball the interior of the car looking for contraband. Then officers
would snap a photograph of the motorist and keep the image on file
for future reference.

Cameron trained his officers to read body language and sought to
disrupt the trade by making buyers skittish. He also tried to make
dealers suspicious through undercover drug buys, using officers from
other jurisdictions. In June 1988, Cameron wrote an article for Law
and Order magazine in which he described the city as one "hit hard by
the crack epidemic."

"Street dealers took over one area of town, staking out their
territories and offering curb service," he wrote. "Property crimes
soared, burglaries increased 100 percent and violence became commonplace."

Cameron detailed his department's response. It was an optimistic,
even self-congratulatory piece. Cameron said his policing program had
made the streets safe again in Fernandina Beach. He explained he had
secured $10,000 from the City Commission for overtime pay, and used
seized drug monies for additional officers, protective vests, riot
guns, Polaroid cameras and the distinctive black jumpsuits. He said
that he'd told his officers to "use the blue lights as often as
possible." And he said that the sight of cops in full tactical gear
making traffic stops was enough to put a damper on the drug trade.

Cameron liked to put on the black jumpsuit himself occasionally and
bust down doors in drug raids. He found it exciting. In a celebrated
bust in July 1986, Cameron was there when Fernandina Beach police
arrested three men at the Golden Isle Motel at the foot of Atlantic
Avenue. The men had come from Miami and rented two motel rooms as a
base to deliver drugs to local dealers. The police stopped the men as
they left the motel for a minor traffic infraction. In the car, they
found a vinyl bag stuffed with $7,000 cash, a .357 magnum revolver
and a small vial of crack cocaine. A drug-sniffing dog combed the
motel room looking for more. Meanwhile, Cameron noticed that a light
fixture in the bathroom ceiling wasn't working. He pulled down the
globe and discovered a cache of tiny bags of crack cocaine, a total
of 371 grams.

Operation Pressure Point was so successful, Cameron likes to say,
that he would bring a bus into the city on Fridays, fill it up with
criminals and ship them off to prison. He cleared out a 10-block area
of the city, "practically arresting everyone," he says. "You could
walk down the street with your wife at 2 a.m. and nothing would
happen." The reaction, initially at least, was enthusiastic.

"It was wonderful," he says. "People were just heaping praise on me.
I was invited to speak at the Chamber of Commerce."

The euphoria didn't last long. After about six weeks, competitors in
the drug trade noticed the vacuum in Fernandina Beach. "They realized
I had created a golden opportunity for them," says Cameron. "Then I
had the Miami Boys [gang] come up from Jacksonville and the Haitians
come up from Vero Beach," he says. "And they were pretty aggressive
in the marketing. They announced their presence by driving down Ninth
Street shooting an Uzi out the window. They threatened people with
assassination. They did all sorts of things. They kidnapped people.
They were very violent. I was sitting in my office one day and I
said, 'Gee, you know, I'd like to have my old drug dealers back. They
were kinder and nicer and gentler than the ones I got now.'"

It remains a salient moment in the former police chief's career. "It
started me on a path of thinkin'," he says. "The more you suppress
the supply, the greater the profit margin. That was true during
alcohol prohibition, and that is true today."

When Cameron participated in an FBI training program in 1988, a
professor at the National Academy praised him as "the prototypical
police chief of the future." Three years later, Cameron resigned.

Although he was starting to question the department's approach to
combating drugs then, it didn't play a role in his decision to leave.
He tendered his resignation in 1991 after a stint as interim city
manager that he says soured him on the city's bureaucracy. After he
left, he taught at the University of North Florida's police academy
for a year, then spent two years in Grenada, teaching scuba diving at
a dive resort. While there, he met and married his wife, Daphne, with
whom he moved to St. Augustine in 1995.

Cameron didn't come to fully embrace the idea of drug legalization
until the Libertarian Party convention in 2004. At the time, Cameron
was a Libertarian candidate for state representative, and he got into
an informal discussion with Libertarian presidential candidate Gary
Nolan. When he expressed his cynical assessment of the War on Drugs,
Nolan told him he knew someone Cameron should meet. A short time
later, Cameron got a call from Jack Cole, one of LEAP's founders.

Politically, Cameron says, speaking out for legalizing drugs sets him
up for his opponents. He was a fairly high-profile Republican before
he left to join the Libertarian party, and remains active in local
politics. When St. Johns County Commissioner Ben Rich hired him as a
legislative aide in 2005, some opponents trotted out his views on
drugs as a way to discredit both men.

"I'm not gaining anything from this," he says.

Cameron will likely seek public office again, and he wouldn't mind
working as a county or city manager. (Coincidentally, newly-minted
Commission Chair Rich led the effort to oust County Manager Ben Adams
last month, so the county will be looking for a replacement. Cameron,
however, says that job would not interest him.) In the meantime,
Cameron has been making the rounds with LEAP. Whether he's making
progress is another question. Folks at the chamber meeting - an
admittedly conservative crowd -- seemed cautiously persuaded by his
presentation. Several even filled out cards indicating their support.
Of course, Cameron's vision of drug legalization - a free-market
embrace of capitalism and profits - may not be a hard sell to chamber
types. It is, in fact, standard Libertarian fare, a la radio
talk-show host Neal Boortz.

But drug legalization remains a radical idea in the law enforcement
community. Duval County Sheriff John Rutherford did not return calls
for comment on the matter, and Nassau County Sheriff Tommy Seagraves
declined to comment, saying it would probably not be in his interest
to weigh in on the subject.

Clay County Sheriff Rick Beseler agreed the war on drugs has not
decreased drug use. "I'm sure there's frustration out there, but I
don't know that LEAP has the answer either," he says. "My personal
feeling is that you should work on the demand side. We've been
working on the supply side for years."

Cameron acknowledges that most officials don't embrace LEAP's agenda.
But he says that privately, many law enforcement agents are as
convinced as he is that the drug war is a sorry enterprise - one that
is doomed to fail, despite its ever-increasing price tag.

Dorchester County Sheriff Nash says that while he respects his old
boss, he isn't ready to jump on legalization bandwagon yet. Then
again, he says, he'd just as soon avoid talking about the issue with
Cameron altogether. "I'm afraid," he admits. "If I sat down with him
long enough, he would convince me."