U.S. DRUG MOVIE HAS COLOMBIANS SAYING 'BEEN THERE, DONE THAT'

But Film 'Traffic' Still An Incentive To Fight Drugs, Analysts Say

In a country where America's war on drugs is a bloody reality fought daily,
the movie Traffic's message that the crusade would be best aimed at U.S.
consumers is drawing a loud "So what's new?"

Hollywood's portrayal of the three-decades-old U.S. drug war as pointless
and destructive has stirred up the Washington policy debate on narcotics
trafficking and consumption as never before.

Yet, Friday's opening of the movie in Colombia, ground zero for an industry
that produces 90 percent of the cocaine and two-thirds of the heroin sold
on U.S. streets, only confirmed the belief here that for too long,
Americans have blamed producers for what is essentially a consumers' problem.

"Its message is much better than 'Just Say No To Drugs,' because it admits
Colombia would not produce drugs if Americans didn't use them," said lawyer
Armando Carrisoza after a showing in Bogota.

Some Colombian analysts say the movie should give their government the
opportunity to push Washington to do more to fight drugs at home -- long
viewed as a politically incorrect stance for a nation receiving $1.3
billion in U.S. aid to fight narcotics.

But many Colombians have greeted the U.S. buzz about the movie with a sense
of "been there, done that," saying that Hollywood cannot possibly reflect
the complexities of the very real drug war they endure every day.

While drug addiction is a growing problem in Colombia, it pales in
comparison with the challenge posed by 30,000 guerrillas who fill their war
coffers by "taxing" cocaine and heroin producers.

"What does Traffic have that is new? For a Latin audience -- already
overexposed to the corruption and violence that this scourge has unleashed
in their countries -- very little. Maybe only the sense that the burden on
pariah nations has lessened," Sergio Gomez Maseri wrote in the daily El Tiempo.

Colombians who have seen Traffic say it is, overall, an excellent
reflection of some of the sordid realities of their country's own war on drugs.

For a change, Colombians are not Hollywood's bad guys -- a role played this
time by Mexican smugglers and corrupt government officials.

The film's portrayal of a Mexican army general who attacks one drug cartel
only because he's on the payroll of rival smugglers recalls the Colombian
police's own use of Cali cartel informants to round up Medellin traffickers.

And Michael Douglas's role as a U.S. drug czar who finds that his daughter
is an addict echoes the plight of Maria Ines Restrepo, head of the
Colombian government's illicit crop substitution program, known by its
Spanish acronym PLANTE.

Her 19-year-old son, Andres Lafaurie, was arrested at Miami International
Airport on Nov. 22 with nearly 1.8 kilograms of heroin strapped to his body.

Some Colombians who watched the movie Friday said they hoped it will help
to persuade the U.S. government to step up its fight against the "gringo
mafias" that sell drugs on U.S. streets and the Americans who buy them.

But others said that demand and supply are two sides of the same coin, a
complex problem that must be attacked both in the streets of America and in
the coca and opium poppy plantations of Colombia.