FROM THE FRONT LINES OF THE DRUG WAR

Dea Agent: Traffic Will Slow With Education

Editor's note: The drug issue is a multifaceted one, as the film "Traffic"
illustrates so vividly. Following is the opinion of one foot soldier in the
international drug wars.

(CNN) -- The Oscar-nominated film "Traffic" weaves together diverse stories
about the war against drugs. One tale, featuring federal Drug Enforcement
Administration agents trying to keep drugs out of the United States, gives
viewers a from-the-trenches look.

Before he shot a single frame, director Steven Soderbergh and members of
his production team interviewed Special Agent Vince Rice, a 10-year veteran
of the DEA who works in San Diego, California.

Rice recently spoke with CNN his insights about drug trafficking and the
movie that portrays it.

CNN: How do you rate "Traffic"?

Special Agent Vince Rice: I rate the movie a B-plus. I think it was done
very well. The stories are accurate; the story line is accurate. ... What
it did was, it really gave you the feel of being out there on the
surveillance, or doing the case.

CNN: There are so many miles of U.S. border to cover. How difficult does
this make your job?

Rice: It makes it almost impossible, because there's almost 2,000 miles of
border. We're talking about the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico; to
actually monitor all of it is a futile attempt. We're doing the best we
can, of course.

We have a lot of illegal traffic passing into the boundaries in the United
States where there are no roads. They're using four-wheel-drive vehicles,
they're doing it on foot, they're packing it in using horses -- all types
of different things. Sometimes they actually swallow the balloons of heroin
and walk it across the port of entry.

CNN: "Traffic" depicted children who had everything. They, too, were
tempted by drugs.

Rice: What it comes down to is, parents need to talk to their children
about drug abuse and drug addiction, and I think a lot of times they don't.
Good kids, bad kids, it doesn't matter: You need to talk to them.

(CNN showed Rice a scene from "Traffic" in which Michael Douglas, who plays
the nation's drug czar, listens in apparent disbelief as one of his
drug-addicted daughter's schoolmates rationalizes sales of illegal narcotics.)

(It's an unbeatable market force, man, the student tells the drug czar.
It's a $300 markup. You can go out on the street and make $500 in two hours
and do what you want for the rest of your day.)

CNN: What did that do to you emotionally when you saw that scene?

Rice: I would like to have Michael Douglas say, "Then how are you going to
spend that money, because the IRS tracks it. Every time you make a deposit
over $10,000 in a bank you have to explain how in the world you earned that
money." You can't just spend that money ... unless you have some
extravagant laundering procedure, and a lot of people don't have that.

CNN: If you could get help in just one area, what would you want it to be?

Rice: If we could teach people not to use drugs and wipe out that demand,
then we'd have an easier job. There wouldn't be a market for any of the
substances coming across the border.

CNN: What's the drug of choice right now?

Rice: We see more marijuana than any other drug coming into the United
States, probably second only to cocaine and methamphetamine.