TRAFFIC SCREENWRITER STEPHEN GAHAGAN

Oscar-Nominated Screenwriter Stephen Gahagan Kicks Off The This Week
Round Table Discussion.

COKIE ROBERTS The drug war is back in the news and not just because of
President Bush's trip to Mexico. Members of Congress are questioning
drug policy because they've seen the movie "Traffic." Just this week
the screenwriter Stephen Gaghan was nominated for an Oscar, and our
George Stephanopoulos sat down with him for a discussion about the
growing drug epidemic in America.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABCNEWS (VO) Stephen Gaghan is wary of being a
screenwriter on a soap box. But when it comes to the drug war, he
can't help sounding like a man on a mission.

STEPHEN GAGHAN We've just filled up our prisons. I mean, they're just
full. We build more and we fill them up. And I hope that--I hope that
we sort of turn the spotlight from the kind of sanctimonious voices
that don't have problems with addiction and don't have problems with
drugs. I hope we turn the spotlight sort of to the people who are
actually suffering from the problem.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (VO) Until 1997, Gaghan was one of them. Like
his character Caroline Wakefield, he was a smart student and star
athlete from a private school who went from booze and pot to cocaine
and heroin. To research "Traffic," he also traveled from the drug
war's front lines along the Mexican border to its command centers back
in the Capitol.

STEPHEN GAGHAN I met very highly placed officials in Washington who
basically said to me, 'You know, off the record, this is B.S. It's
B.S. I've dedicated eight years of my life to this stuff and I feel
like I disappeared down a rat hole. How did I get into this stupid war
on drugs?' I heard that 50--I heard it so many times I can't even tell
you from people who then have to go out and do a press conference and
go, 'Yeah, we're winning the war on drugs, buddy.' And I just felt for
them. That felt like what it seemed like to be an addict. The same
problems. You're stuck in some system, you can't get out of it, you
don't know what to do. You don't know how you got there. You don't
know where retreat is.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (VO) That futility is "Traffic"'s theme. The
reality facing drug czar Robert Wakefield from his first days on the
job. (Clip from "Traffic" shown courtesy of USA Films)

STEPHEN GAGHAN You ask for new ideas. You--you've met with this just, I
don't know, you know?

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS But do they not know and don't--or do they not
say?

STEPHEN GAGHAN You know, we have so polarized the semantics of this
debate that to say legalization out loud brands you a revolutionary.
It brand--even to try it, you know, let's do a test case somewhere and
see what happens. Take a small place, try decriminalizing it, making
it legal, giving it to the addicts, see what happens, open a dialogue,
tax it, use the money for the treatment programs. I...

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS But if you break the law while you're on drugs,
put the hammer...

STEPHEN GAGHAN You break the law while you're on drugs, throw the
hammer down. You commit a violent crime on drugs, lock them up.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (VO) Gaghan also supports clean needle and
methadone programs. In initiatives like California's Proposition 36,
to provide treatment instead of jail for drug offenders. 'But more
important than any single reform,' he says, 'is replacing the rhetoric
of war with an ethic of compassion.'

STEPHEN GAGHAN And it's impossible to explain this to, you know,
William Bennett. I know everybody thinks he's, you know, he's a great
guy. He's done right. You know, he set the tone for this thing, which
was everybody's a criminal. But the net effect of that, the real
effect is that people who are marginal, people who could be saved,
people who are crying out for help are afraid to, because they're
afraid they'll be branded. I think these people stay in the dark
shadows. When, if we had a sort of more accepting system, accepting
rhetoric, 'You're not a criminal. You have a health care problem.'
It's easy to raise your hand and say, 'Hey, I have a health care
problem. I need some help,' than to say, 'Hey, I'm a criminal. I need
some jail.'

This Week Round Table

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Now Cokie, Bennett, the former drug czar and
Gaghan were sparring for several weeks and Bennett actually comes back
this morning in the Washington Post with his Op-Ed on the real lessons
on the drug war. What he takes issue with is this idea that
stigmatizing drug use makes it worse. And he says that sometimes
having a criminal sanction will strike fear into the hearts of people
who don't want to get arrested. But I do think there's some common
ground here. And it's around the idea of treatment, particularly the
way it's done in drug courts. First time offenders get treatment
instead of prison, but the judges have this authority if the people
don't follow treatment to put them back in jail.

COKIE ROBERTS Joining us here, of course, is George Will who, and I
would suspect you don't agree with all of that.

GEORGE WILL, ABCNEWS Well, first of all, it should be pointed out that
Mr. Gaghan, himself, says that he began to get straight when, on one
weekend, his three primary de--drug dealers were arrested. So
enforcement does matter in a case like this. Look, we all know that
the lines have crossed in an ominous way. Drug seizures going up, but
the street price of drug going down for 20 years, which indicates that
fighting it on the supply side isn't working and a $50 billion suction
from this country is destabilizing Latin America. But where I disagree
with Mr. Gaghan is in saying that this is a health care problem. One
of the problems in our country is to medicalize moral failure. And in
fact, this is not like the flu, this is a series of dangerous choices.

COKIE ROBERTS But wait...

GEORGE WILL And Bill...

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS George, it's not fair, not for people who have a
hard-core addiction problem, they cannot break it. It's not by choice
anymore. For most people it is, but not for everyone.

GEORGE WILL Not anymore. But it all starts with the first time and the
first time is apt to be prevented if you have a strong moral position
against it, stigmatized by the law to paraphrase a famous slogan,
"Just say no."

SAM DONALDSON But often moral failure can't be enforced by the law. I
know we do in some cases, but I walk the fence here. How we
decriminalize for the user, it's called recreational--apply anyway--but
we should still try for the pushers, for the people who do prey on the
user by bringing it in to make them criminals.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS And--and even those who have started the "Just
Say No" program. Remember the big DARE education program, you go in,
send police into--into elementary schools and tell them all the dangers
of drug use. This week, everyone admits it doesn't work. We have to
shift to focusing on older kids and having just more discussion about
the drug use, not lecturing.

COKIE ROBERTS But--but we have found that drug education makes a
difference.

GEORGE WILL Yeah, it makes an enormous difference.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS The kind of education makes a difference though.
You have to have people role-playing, not just the lecture too.

GEORGE WILL But it's moral education as well. And it's moral education
buttressed by a law that stigmatizes the use. There are two other
points in which Mr.--Mr. Gaghan is just wrong. The first is, our
prisons are not largely full of non-violent, small drug offenders,
it's just not true. Second, it is not true that it takes heroism to be
a lonely dissenter and fav--favor decriminalization. A Nobel Prize
economist does, Milton Friedman, a former secretary of state, George
Schultz, does.

SAM DONALDSON When it comes to a health problem...

COKIE ROBERTS But, wait a second. On your first...

SAM DONALDSON When it comes to a health problem, cigarettes cause more
deaths in this country than drugs do. And of course, we still allow
that and we don't say that someone has a moral lapse, we try to use
educational methods to get rid of the habit.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Just one point. Sixty to 70 percent of the
people in prisons have evidence of drug use when they go in or when
they're committing a crime, it's why we have to address it.

GEORGE WILL But, that's not why they're in jail.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS And one of the reasons that everybody's taking a
look at it, cause even Republican are. Governor George Pataki of New
York was saying we have to look at these Rockefeller drug laws that
have just criminalized first-time offenders.

GEORGE WILL They--there is one thing to say. There is drug involvement
in many crimes. It's another thing to say that the crime is drug
involvement.

COKIE ROBERTS OK, we're not going to solve it today. And we're going
to have a lot of other issues to talk about as we continue our
ROUNDTABLE when we come back.

(Commercial break)