DRAMA - DRUGS - THE WAR TO END NO WARS

OUR LAWS AGAINST illegal drugs function as a price support system for the
criminal drug industry. They do not stop drugs. Despite billions of dollars
spent and a toll of death, addiction, crime, corruption and lives wasted in
prison, it is possible today for anyone who wants drugs to get them.

"For someone my age,'' says a high school student in the new film
"Traffic,'' "it's a lot easier to get drugs than it is to get alcohol.''

Who supports the drug law enforcement industry? A good many honest and
sincere people, to be sure, as well as politicians who may know drug laws
are futile, but don't have the nerve to appear soft on the issue. And
corrupt lawmen, who find drugs a lucrative source of bribes, kickbacks and
payoffs. And the drug cartels themselves, since the laws make their
business so profitable.

If the decriminalization of drugs were ever seriously considered in this
country, the opponents would include not only high-minded public servants,
but the kingpins of the illegal drug industry.

These are the conclusions I draw from "Traffic,'' Steven Soderbergh's new
film, which traces the drug traffic in North America from the bottom to the
top of the supply chain. They may not be your conclusions. Draw your own.

Soderbergh himself does not favor legalizing drugs, but believes addiction
is a public health problem, not a crime. Certainly, drugs breed crime -
addicts steal because they have few other choices - and a more rational
policy would result in a lower crime rate and a safer society.

The movie tells several parallel stories; sometimes they link, but usually
they do not. We meet two Mexican drug enforcement cops; two federal Drug
Enforcement Administration agents based in San Diego; a mid-level
wholesaler who imports drugs from Mexico; a high-level drug millionaire who
seems to be a respectable businessman; a federal judge who is appointed the
U.S. drug czar; and his teen-age daughter, who becomes addicted to cocaine
and nearly destroys her life.

We also meet a Mexican general who has made it his goal to destroy a drug
cartel - but not for the reasons he claims. And we see how cooperation
between Mexican and U.S. authorities is compromised because key people on
both sides may be corrupt and betray secrets.

The movie is inspired by a five-part "Masterpiece Theater'' series named
"Traffik,'' which ran 10 years ago and traced the movement of heroin from
the poppy fields of Turkey to the streets of Europe. The story in North
America is much the same, which is why adapting this material was so
depressingly easy.

At every level, the illegal drug business is about making money. If there
is anything more lucrative than an addictive substance that is legal, such
as alcohol or tobacco, it is one that is illegal, like drugs - because the
suppliers aren't taxed or regulated and have no overhead for advertising,
packaging, insurance, employee benefits or quality control. Drugs are
produced by subsistence-level peasants and move through a distribution
chain of street sellers; costs to the end user are kept low to encourage
addiction.

Soderbergh's film uses a level-headed approach. It watches, it observes, it
does not do much editorializing. The futility of anti-drug measures is
brought home through practical scenarios, not speeches and messages -
except for a few.

One of the most heartfelt tales comes from a black man who observes that at
any given moment in America, 100,000 white people are driving through black
neighborhoods looking for drugs. A dealer who can make $200 in two hours is
hardly motivated to seek other employment.

The key performance in the movie is by Michael Douglas as Robert Wakefield,
an Ohio judge tapped by the White House as the nation's new drug czar. He
holds all the usual opinions, mouths all the standard platitudes, shares
all the naive assumptions - including his belief that he can destroy one of
the Mexican cartels by cooperating with the Mexican authorities. This is
true in theory, but in practice his information simply provides an
advantage for one cartel over the other.

Wakefield is a good man. His daughter, Caroline (Erika Christensen), is an
honor student. One night at a party with other teen-agers, she tries
cocaine and likes it - very much. We see how easily the drug is available
to her, how quickly she gets hooked, how swiftly she falls through the
safety nets of family and society.

This is the social cost of addiction, and the rationale for passing laws
against drugs. But we see that it happens despite the laws, and that
without a profit motive drugs might not be so easily available in her circle.

In Mexico, we meet two hard-working cops in the drug wars, played by
Benicio Del Toro and Jacob Vargas, who intercept a big drug shipment but
then are themselves intercepted by troops commanded by an army general
(Tomas Milian), who is sort of the J. Edgar Hoover of Mexican drug enforcement.

In California, we meet a middleman (Miguel Ferrer) who imports and
distributes drugs, and two federal agents (Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman) who
are on his trail.

And we meet the top executive for this operation, a respectable millionaire
(Steven Bauer) and his socialite wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who has no
idea where her money comes from.

Soderbergh's story, from a screenplay by Stephen Gaghan, cuts between these
characters so smoothly that even a fairly complex scenario remains clear
and charged with tension. In that sense, it's like Martin Scorsese's "Good
Fellas,''

"Traffic'' is fascinating at one level simply because it shows how things
work - how the drugs are marketed, how the laws are sidestepped. The
problem is like a punching bag. You can hammer it all day and still it
hangs there, unchanged.

The movie is powerful precisely because it doesn't preach. It is so
restrained that at one moment - the judge's final speech - I wanted one
more sentence, making a point, but the movie lets us supply that thought
for ourselves.

The facts make their own case: This war is not winnable on the present
terms, and takes a greater toll in human lives than the drugs themselves.
The drug war costs $19 billion a year, but scenes near the end of the film
suggest that more addicts are helped by two free programs, Alcoholics
Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, than by all the drug troops put together.

Roger Ebert is the Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic for the Chicago
Sun-Times.