THE REAL LESSONS FROM 'TRAFFIC'

The critically acclaimed film "Traffic" is a poignant movie about drug use
and the war on drugs. By almost all accounts, it captures the hopelessness
and tragedy of drug addiction, as well as the perils inherent in combating
a moral and legal wrong, in a forthright and convincing manner.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Stephen Gaghan claimed that he
wrote the movie script to save the life of his friend Robert Bingham, a
heroin addict who died before the film was completed. In that interview,
Gaghan blamed me for Bingham's death: "The reason he's dead is that he
couldn't talk about his problem publicly, because of the stigma, and the
stigma comes straight from William Bennett."

In response, Herbert D. Kleber -- the director of the division on substance
abuse at Columbia University, who served as my deputy director for
treatment and prevention when I was "drug czar" -- pointed out that stigma
related to drug addiction long predated my tenure in the drug position and
that Bingham's drug use was well-known before his death.

In a more recent article in the New York Times, Gaghan conceded that much
of "Traffic" stemmed from his own real-life addictions. He hit the wall in
July 1997 and -- after seeking treatment -- has now been sober for about 3
1/2 years. He pointed again to "the stigma and shame of drug addiction" as
"what makes it difficult for people to raise their hand and ask for help."
The lesson he put into "Traffic," which he hopes viewers will take out, is
that "drugs should be considered a health care issue rather than a criminal
issue."

I write not to settle a score with Gaghan but to use the tragedies that
befell him to illustrate some larger points about drug use and drug
addiction. I have spent more than a decade studying, commenting on and
fighting America's drug epidemic, and Gaghan's story makes clear many of
the lessons I have learned.

One key lesson is that prevention is indeed the most important weapon we
have in the fight against drug use. We must encourage parents to educate
children about the dangers of drug use. As Carroll O'Connor has said in his
eloquent advertisement for the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, "Get
between your kid and drugs any way you can, if you want to save your kid's
life."

But prevention involves more than simply teaching that drug use is wrong.
It entails making drugs scarcer, more expensive and less pure. When drugs
are more readily available, more people try them and more people become
addicted.

Once users are addicted, we must do what we can to free addicts from the
grip of drugs. We should make treatment -- effective treatment -- more
available. But effective treatment entails more than just filling slots in
centers. To promote truly effective treatment, we must first recognize that
treatment doesn't always work and that even the best treatment works only
some of the time.

Approximately half of all addicts fail to complete the treatment programs
that they enter. For those who do complete a good treatment program, there
is about a 75 percent chance they will still be drug-free in five years. In
other words, of those who enter a sound treatment program, we can expect
about 38 percent to be cured.

One clear fact about drug treatment is that success in treatment is a
function of time in treatment. And time in treatment is often a function of
coercion -- being forced into treatment by a loved one, an employer or, as
is often the case, the legal system. People who are forced to enter
treatment under legal sanctions are more likely to complete treatment
programs and thus more likely to get well. If we treat drug use as a purely
medical problem, and treatment as something that can be only voluntarily
taken up, fewer people will enter treatment -- and those who enter
treatment are less likely to get well.

Gaghan's own story mirrors those of many people I have encountered over the
past decade. He started drinking and using marijuana as a teenager,
graduated to cocaine and heroin and ended up with crack and freebase. It
was always easy to score the drugs -- until his three primary dealers were
arrested in one weekend.

"I was left alone, and I just hit that place, that total incomprehensible
demoralization," Gaghan told the New York Times. "I just couldn't take
another minute of it." In the end, Gaghan sought the aid of a friend who
had recently quit drugs, entered treatment and began, as the Times put it,
"What he hopes is a whole new life."

When the criminal justice system took Gaghan's dealers off the streets, it
started him on the road to recovery. Gaghan was fortunate to have his
personal catharsis before his addiction destroyed him. Many others -- like
Robert Bingham -- are not so lucky.

In treating drug addiction, scientific and medical advances are
indispensable tools that hold great promise for more effective treatment.
But the criminal justice system plays a critical role as well. It can help
prevent drug use by people who are fearful of being arrested and by the
majority of Americans who have respect for the law. It can also help
through coercion: By forcing addicts to seek treatment, as in the case of
Stephen Gaghan. The story of "Traffic" and, behind it, the story of
Gaghan's life are both powerful and instructive. But we must learn the
right lessons from them.

The writer is chairman of K12 and co-chairman of the Partnership for a
Drug-Free America.