'TRAFFIC' SCHOOL

The Hollywood Blockbuster Will Bring Home Message To Anti-Drug Chiefs
About Need For Public Education And More Transparency In Drug Policy

BANGKOK - In Hollywood, the gritty drug movie, Traffic, scored with
four Academy Awards.

In Bangkok it is a hit with United Nation's drug busters, who are
hoping to use the no-holds-barred film to educate movie goers about
drugs and foster community involvement to combat usage.

The film premiered yesterday and those invited included Thailand's
anti-narcotics chiefs.

The movie's juxtaposing storyline featuring the cross-border
trafficking of drugs between Mexico and the US is particularly
relevant to Thailand, which is drowning in a flood of methamphetamine
pills from neighbouring Myanmar.

In the war of words between Thai politicians and the Myanmar
government about who to blame - Myanmar's border drug factories or
Thailand's traffickers and suppliers of the chemical ingredients - it
is the fight against drugs that suffers, says the UN.

Dr Sandro Calvani, East Asia representative for the UN Drug Control
Programme (UNDCP), is the man who came up with the idea of using
Traffic in an effort to show people that if the drug scourge is to be
beaten, people need to be educated and governments need to be open.

The UNDCP office in Yangon also wants to use Traffic as an educational
tool.

Myanmar is a country considered by the West as a virtual narco-state,
and is blamed by Thailand as the source of the drug epidemic ravaging
Thai society.

In Thailand, several ministers and officers with the Office of the
Narcotics Control Board had been invited to the charity premiere of
Traffic, which on Sunday won a handful of Oscars, including best
director for Steven Soderbergh.

Dr Calvani said: 'Traffic is a movie that suggests that there is a
great need for more transparency in national and international
drug-control policy and there is a need for more listening,
understanding and transparency about what works and what does not work.

'This is a problem of civil society and until we get people on our
side, there will be no solution.'

One of the movie's storylines revolves around a top US anti-narcotics
official, played by Michael Douglas, who discovers that his own
daughter is an addict.

In Thailand, one-third of some high-school populations are taking
methamphetamines - known as yaa bah or crazy drug - and even
primary-school pupils have been found with the pills.

An estimated 700 million pills will flood into Thailand from Myanmar
this year.

The issue is sure to be raised when Thai Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra visits Yangon in a meeting expected to take place late next
month.

The movie premiere, co-sponsored by ESCAP, will feature an exhibition
on drug policy, with the proceeds going to a drug rehabilitation centre.