At the Movies: The Buzz on "Traffic"
drcnet.org
Christian Ettinger for DRCNet
"Traffic," the soon-to-be released Hollywood film directed by
Steven Soderbergh and starring Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta
Jones, merits the attention of drug policy reform activists. An
ambitious, sprawling, and panoramic overview of the drug war, the
film dives into the tragedy and hypocrisy of the War on Drugs
like no Hollywood movie before it. The film's nationwide release
in the coming weeks is certain to spark popular interest in drug
policy, and that represents an opportunity which drug policy
reformers should seize.
"Traffic" is, at different times, heavy-handed, shrill, and
melodramatic, and it carries mixed messages -- it is, after all,
a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster. But its bottom line -- after
all the tragicomic scenes of a futile War on Drugs in action in
Mexico, on the border, on America's streets, and in Washington's
corridors of power -- is that the War on Drugs is doomed to
failure. Instead, the film implicitly argues that a harm
reduction approach centered on drug treatment is a more realistic
approach for reducing substance abuse and its attendant harms.
Ironically, some of the politicians who designed the current drug
policy and the armed bureaucrats who implement it have walk-on
roles as themselves in the film. Do they realize their dogma is
being questioned? According to the Associated Press, the
filmmakers got Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) appear in the film by
telling his staff, "the movie will be about how drugs destroy
families."
The AP story goes on to say the film has an anti-drug message,
but that is an oversimplification. True, in some scenes that
could have come from "Reefer Madness," teens fall victim to the
allure of drugs. But to call "Traffic" an anti-drug movie misses
the film's primary message, pounded into the viewer with all the
subtlety of a sledgehammer, that the War on Drugs must end.
The film's plot centers on Michael Douglas as a reluctant Drug
Czar whose high school age honor student daughter dabbles in
drugs and then in an absurdly short time becomes a full fledged
crack whore at the mercy of her demonic African-American drug
dealer. This is the kind of cautionary tale that fueled the drug
war to begin with, and it reads as if written by Barry McCaffrey
himself.
McCaffrey also could have scripted the lurid scenes of the Drug
Czar's daughter and her prep school friends progressing with
astounding speed from smoking pot to using speedballs, a mixture
of cocaine and heroin. In its typically unsubtle fashion, the
movie manages to bring in both the racial-sexual fears that
envelop drug war zealots and the "gateway drug" theory. If those
scenes are to be believed, any teenage girl who tries marijuana
is one step away from ruin.
While these cartoonish scenes certainly convey an anti-drug
message out of the 1930s, it is unlikely that Sen. Hatch and
other drug warrior senators will like the way the movie plays
out. Watching his daughter's deterioration does not turn Douglas
into an even more zealous drug warrior -- far from it. Instead,
Douglas comes to see his job, his office, and the drug war as a
sham. In addition to Hatch's appearance, in fact, is a cameo by
well-known drug war critic Ethan Nadelmann, director of the
Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation.
(Ed: Well-known in some circles, anyway. According to the
gossip columns, the Screen Actors Guild is threatening to fine
the film's producers $500 each for allowing Nadelmann, as well as
journalist J.D. Podolsky, to play themselves. Under union rules,
Nadelmann and Podolsky are not well known enough to play
themselves, and should have been portrayed by union actors.
Sorry, Ethan.)
Just as the film-makers provide both anti-drug abuse and anti-
drug war messages, they also try to have it both ways in the
production notes used to promote the film.
"Everybody who read the script -- whether from the political
right or left, law enforcement or drug addicts -- thought the
script was on their side," said screenwriter Stephen Gaghan in
the notes.
Producer Laura Bickford agrees, "What was curious about the
reaction to the script was that everybody felt it represented
their point of view. The DEA, which gave us enormous support,
felt it was one of the most truthful things they'd ever read
about what it's like to be in law enforcement fighting the
fight."
But if the DEA liked the script, it may therefore believe its
mission is futile. In an example of art imitating life, scenes
portraying the Mexican drug czar as himself a corrupt drug dealer
drive home the point that trying to stop the flow of drugs is
like trying to plow the sea.
In one of the most eloquently stunning scenes in the film,
Douglas, headed back to Washington after a fact-finding mission
in Mexico, asks his policy experts whether they have any new
ideas or strategies. The silence is deafening.
Gaghan does concede in the notes that after researching the issue
and speaking with drug policy makers, he found, "Speaking
candidly nobody thought the current policies were working --
nobody."
"We're trying to be as dispassionate as we can," added
Soderbergh.
But he sang a slightly different tune in a recent interview with
Salon. "I came away from this process thinking, 'All right let's
talk about realistic stuff.' Stuff like Prop. 36 (the California
initiative passed this year that offers diversion to treatment
programs for nonviolent drug offenders); finding a way to look at
this as a health care issue, not a criminal issue; something
other than filling up prisons with nonviolent users."
Salon critic Jeff Stark sums up the film's message well:
"'Traffic' is the first mainstream, major Hollywood production
that has come out and said that America's drug war is not
winnable. The film argues both implicitly and explicitly that
going after the suppliers and the drug traffickers -- where the
US spends the bulk of its $19-billion-a-year budget -- simply
doesn't work, that it kills innocents and turns others into
criminals, that it devastates poor neighborhoods, that it can't
stop or even attenuate an insatiable social maw of illicit drug
use" (http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2000/12/20/traffic_essay/).
Despite the filmmaker's protestations, Stark writes that their
intentions were unambiguous. "Soderbergh and Gaghan have a clear
opinion and neither are holding back -- they're not afraid to
risk sounding didactic in service of what they consider a moral
high ground."
The New York Film Critics Circle agrees with Stark. When they
awarded "Traffic" the prize for best picture, they called the
film an indictment of the drug war, not an indictment of drugs or
drug users.
"Traffic" is by no means a perfect film, but it does provide a
huge potential opening to expand popular consciousness of the
evils of the drug war and the search for better answers.
"Traffic" opens in New York and Los Angeles next week and
nationally in January.
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