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drug czar-elect in the movie Traffic has decided to look
at the grit of drug trade and drug addiction first hand, to
which end he forages about Tijuana and has a near overdose. Groggy
from what he has seen, he accosts his staff on his posh private
plane going back to Washington. Michael Douglas does one of his
jut-jawed scenes, with which the movie is replete, and says he wants
all ideas ventilated. Everything. The director, who is headed
for Oscarland, wisely decided to cut away before any new ideas were
in fact proffered, because the drift of the movie — like the
drift of public policy in the matter of drugs — is: Continue,
at breathless speed, to accomplish…nothing.
At a recent press conference, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was
asked if the president had seen the movie.
Answer: Yes.
Have there been any policy changes on the matter of drugs?
Mr. Bush has said that in his view (personally tested), treatment
is more effective than punishment. To this end, when talking about
the subject with the president of Mexico, the idea was evidently
tossed around to concentrate less on interdicting supply than on
"reducing demand." How do you do that?
Well, of course, the conventional way is to punish those who make
up the demand. If Johnny is thinking of buying some coke, the idea
of a couple of years in jail is supposed to deter him, and certainly
does deter some prospective users. The movie seen by the president
glancingly acknowledges the point, but its dramatic focus isn't
on Socratic monologues that weigh the lure of a snort over against
the horror of a prison term. The focus, quite understandably, is
on young people who would do anything for another fix and, in the
movie, do.
Another deterrent is to expose the addict or near-addict to a depiction
of what it is like to suffer the thralldom of drugs. Five recovering
users in California were interviewed in Phoenix House, the fine
drug recovery center, after being shown the movie. They discussed
their own itineraries en route to addiction, and one 17-year-old
said that if she had seen this movie, she probably would have found
the strength to knock off from drugs.
And then, of course, what is universally acknowledged as necessary
is the loyalty and devotion of parents. But, for the record, this
didn't help the Traffic people one bit. Michael Douglas's
16-year-old daughter repaid parental concern not at all, adding
wrinkles every few minutes to her father's concern.
The movie ends with a Little League baseball scene that suggests
that there is a ray or two of sun out there waiting for those who
hope hard enough. The baseball scene comes right after an Alcoholics
Anonymous-type sequence, in which the daughter stands up before
her fellow addicts, giving details of her ordeal and the steps she
thinks useful in combating the temptation.
But the dramatic theme of the movie isn't about recovery; rather
it is on hopelessness at every level, the hopelessness of the addict
and of laws and mores that collapse under the pressure of money.
"How can Mexico's drug lords begin to match the resources
of the United States?" one naïf asks. He is abruptly stopped by
the war-weary official who says the drug lords are ten times as
powerful as their adversaries. What they have working for them is
Americans willing to pay $50 billion for their products.
Recent figures advise us that hard-core cocaine users ten years
ago numbered 3.5 million. The figure today: 3.5 million. The key
question then becomes: How many of those who ten years ago used
coke are still doing so? Some continue to use the drug, some are
cured, and some are dead. What is the interrelationship between
public policy and the incidence of cure? What would that 3.5 million
figure be if laws against coke were relaxed? What would it be if
the $20 billion now spent on deterrence were instead spent on therapy?
Ten years ago heroin users numbered 600,000. Now it is 980,000.
What was the drug czar doing that let that happen? Did we run out
of money? Manifestly the heroin makers have not run out of money.
One does not sense, in the new administration, any dramatic insights
on how to redirect policies that would seem to have failed. President
Bush is not, by background or disposition, a natural leader for
a dramatic change in policy. Yes, by all means reduce the demand.
And yes, it would help prospective drug takers to see the movie,
Traffic. On the other hand, it would be prudent not to view
it repeatedly. That would make the viewer reach out for any drug
in sight.
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