DECRIMINALIZING MARIJUANA

Back in 1990, Jerry Cameron was mighty pleased with
himself.

That February, the Fernandina Beach police chief and his officers
snagged 14 crack dealers during "Operation Habitual Offender." This
time, he thought, things would be different because the persistent
ones faced being put away.

"These guys were actually laughing about getting arrested on past
occasions," Cameron told the Times-Union then. "We've even had them
say they would not quit selling drugs.

But some drug dealers were still laughing. Soon, Cameron would see
that drug trade was bigger than a few hustlers.

"I was a hero - until the new guys arrived," Cameron told me recently,
whose department was once featured on the cover of Law and Order
magazine for its vigilance in fighting drugs.

That experience stuck with Cameron, who resigned as police chief the
following year. He now lives in St. Augustine, and even ran for a
state House seat as a Libertarian two years ago.

But Cameron is still battling the drug trade. Except now, he's doing
it by trying to end the war in which he once enlisted to fight.

That would be the War on Drugs. A war that has spanned two decades,
costs nearly $70 billion a year, and has done more to fill prisons and
destabilize poor black communities than to dry up the demand for
illegal drugs.

"We will never arrest our way out of this situation," Cameron said.
"We will never be able to deal with our drug problem until we deal
with our drug war."

This former drug fighter, in fact, is now a board member of Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, a national organization
mostly of former and current law enforcement officials who believe
that the best way to deal with the problem is through legalization and
regulation.

Cameron makes sense.

Criminalizing drugs has kept the demand high, Cameron said, and
suppliers use numerous means to get their product on the streets.

In many cases, this means violence and battles for territories. It
also feeds other, more dangerous enterprises - such as illegal gun
trafficking, carjackings and home invasion robberies.

It turns entire communities into prisons.

But by regulating drugs - in the same manner that alcohol and tobacco
is regulated - at least the violence goes away. That alone would make
some communities more livable. So that people like Kathryn Johnston,
an elderly Atlanta woman who was recently shot to death by narcotics
officers who kicked in her door on a bad tip, won't have to keep a
revolver at the ready.

Cameron also said he believes that regulating drugs won't spawn any
more new users than the regulation of alcohol and cigarettes spawns
new drinkers and smokers. To get alcohol and cigarettes, you have to
produce identification, and tobacco advertising is severely restricted.

But no one asks for ID when a minor buys marijuana or
crack.

"A man once told me that we have to think about the kids in all of
this," Cameron said. "I said: 'If you didn't know where to get
marijuana tonight, who would you ask?'"

"You'd ask the kids ... it's now easier for kids to get marijuana than
beer or cigarettes."

Also, Cameron said, tobacco kills more people each year than
marijuana. But by taxing it and regulating it, the money at least goes
back to help undo some of the damage it causes society.

Not so for the drug trade. It is totally controlled by criminals - and
now, terrorist groups are even turning to it for cash.

I'm not ready to make the leap toward legalizing drugs. I do, however,
believe that legalization and regulation ought to be part of any
debate on ending the illegal drug trade. Maybe some regulation
experiments are in order here.

"We need to have the debate [about legalizing drugs]," Marc Mauer,
assistant director of the Sentencing Project, told me. "But as we have
that debate, we can do a lot of things to reduce the drug trade now
. we can invest less in prisons and take some of that money and
invest it in rehab and in economics."

And realize that even if we never stop individuals from using drugs,
we can, at least, stop the demand from claiming entire communities.