LOSING THE DRUG WAR

Traffic Is A Powerful Movie Depicting A Conflict That's Not
Winnable

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.

Also 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 favour legalizing drugs,
but believes addiction is a public health problem, not a crime.
Certainly drugs breed crime - addicts steal because they must - and a
more rational policy would result in a lower crime rate and a safer
society.

The movie tells several parallel stories, which sometimes link but
usually do not. We meet two Mexican drug enforcement cops. Two San
Diego DEA agents. 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 teenage 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 co-operation between Mexican and American 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
Traffic, 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 depressing 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, like 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 hopelessness of
anti-drug measures is brought home through practical scenarios, not
speeches and messages - except for a few. One of the most heartfelt
comes from a black man who observes that at any given moment in
America, 100,000 white people are driving through black neighbourhoods
looking for drugs, and a dealer who can make $200 in two hours is
hardly motivated to seek other employment.

The key performance in the movie is given 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
co-operating 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 honour student. One night at a party with other teenagers, 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 (Thomas Millian), who is sort of the J. Edgar Hoover of
Mexican drug enforcement. In California, we meet a middleman (Jose
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. Like Martin Scorcese's
Goodfellas, 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 judges's final speech - I wanted
one more sentence, making a point, but the movie lets us supply that
thought for ourselves.

And the facts make their own argument: 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 US a year, but scenes near
the end of the film suggest that more addicts are helped by two free
program's, Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, than by all
the drug troops put together.