WAR ON DRUGS A TOTAL BUST

In The End, It All Seems So Futile.

Undoubtedly, this was not the intended message of DEA (Spike TV, 11
tonight), a new six-part series that returns a spotlight to the
battle that once occupied the zeitgeist before terror: the war on drugs.

Executive-produced by Al Roker - yes, he does more than the weather
- - DEA takes viewers behind the scenes in Detroit, where brawny
agents navigate the narcotics labyrinth while looking for the bad guys.

Cameras are rolling as Group 14 of the Drug Enforcement
Administration - a unit that's tackled 100 cases over the past year
resulting in more than 200 busts and $9 million in seizures -
executes warrants and high-risk takedowns.

These scenes do not deviate from fictional portrayals: unmarked
vehicles roll into dodgy neighbourhoods carrying a squad of heavily
armed agents in flak jackets. The agents race toward the target
house in stack formation. They use metal Hallagan tools to pry open
screens. They smash doors from hinges with battering rams.

In a disorienting haze of shouts, threats and constant
identification, they storm the premises, guns drawn.

If all goes according to plan, the suspects will be subdued without
incident during the controlled chaos.

As the opening graphic states, this is "one of the most dangerous
jobs in the world." Or in the words of agent Roy Hoyt: "Anytime that
dope and money come together there is always the possibility of violence."

In fact, since the DEA was created in 1973 by executive order of
U.S. president Richard Nixon, 75 agents have been killed in the line of duty.

This isn't mentioned tonight, nor is the cost of the war on drugs,
estimated to be $500 billion over the past 35 years.

The mission here, it seems, is to provide some exposure to an agency
that lives in the pop-cultural shadow of the FBI and CIA. DEA is
about visceral danger, it is about understanding street-level
tactics, it is about learning the vernacular: "buy-walk,"
"buy-bust," "the flip," "confidential informants."

So what you get is a high-octane sprint across the front lines of
the drug war without any rooting sense of context. As such, DEA has
the pulse of Cops, the heartbeat of World's Wildest Police Chases,
but none of the contemplative sobriety of The Wire.

There's no question these agents are brave.

But after one hour, you can't help but wonder if they appreciate the
intractable, cyclical and arguably winless nature of the war they've
been asked to fight.

This year, the DEA has a budget of $2.3 billion. The administration
employs more than 11,000 agents, investigators and intelligence
specialists. There are 227 offices in America alone, with another 86
branches in 62 countries.

Are these enormous resources making even the slightest dent in the
global drug trade? Or is the "war on drugs" a metaphorical
abstraction that, four decades later, continues to be crushed by the
weight of its own impractical solutions?

"These people that we target, they're two- and three-time
offenders," says special agent Brad Ripken tonight. "You know,
they've been through the prison system. They come back out and they
go right back to it."

In another scene, a 60-year-old suspect is arrested; we learn he's
been in and out of the system since 1974, when he first started dealing.

That those in the drug racket are particularly prone to recidivism
is not surprising. What is surprising, though, is that communities,
governments and law enforcement continue to fixate on supply,
without adequately considering demand, which is to say, treatment
for addiction.

No, not much has changed since drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was gunned
down by Colombian agents in 1993. And nothing ever will until this
war gets new battle plans.