When Ken Loachs Cathy Come Home was first screened on the BBC, in 1965, its impact was way beyond anything the director could have imagined. The grim tale of a young mother, destitute on the streets of London, pricked the nations conscience and put the issue of homelessness centre stage of the political agenda. It triggered more than just a change in attitudes. It led to a change in the law.
Its the sort of thing most film-makers can only dream of. The China Syndrome could be cited as another example. It put the heeby-jeebies up a world growing ever more distrustful of nuclear power. The Chernobyl disaster a couple of years later further consolidated its influence.
By the time Steven Soderburgh walked onto the podium to collect his Oscar for Best Director last weekend, he must have realised that with his feature Traffic hed done something much more important than anything Hollywood could reward him for. He had been catapulted into a very select group of movie-makers. He had created a powerful work which had succeeded in piercing a social bubble some had thought was invincible.
Traffic is a labyrinthine movie, pieced together like a jigsaw, consisting of a number of interlocking stories, each one calculated to throw light on different aspects of the war against drugs. But despite its apparent complexity, the basic premise of the movie is pretty straightforward.
Soderburgh sets out to show, on the one hand, that law enforcement agencies are struggling in vain to stem the flood of illegal narcotics coming into the United States. And on the other hand, that anyone, even a drug tsars daughter, can get caught up in drug abuse, as the flood of illegal drugs threatens to spiral out of control. With these two threads Soderburgh weaves his magic and leaves no one in any doubt that the war against drugs is a lost cause.
And just as The China Syndrome tapped into fears of a nuclear accident, and Dead Man Walking got people talking about the death penalty, Traffic has tapped into every ordinary Americans worst nightmare - which is that not only has the war against drugs has been lost, but worse, no one seems to know what to do next.
With this unnerving message at the films core, Traffic has become more than just an unlikely box-office smash in the States, the film has now taken on a life of its own and become a phenomenon every bit as influential as our own Cathy Come Home was in the sixties. Believe me, Traffic is kicking some serious ass.
In the few short weeks between Traffic being Oscar-nominated for best movie, and the night of the ceremony itself, the debate on Americas drug policy has shifted centre-stage. Network TV stations have agonised on the subject night after night. Almost every major and local newspaper in America joined in. Politicians all the way from the White House and Capitol Hill, down through State Governors and local senators, have all thrown themselves into the drugs debate. The arguments go round and round in bars, colleges, schools, workplaces. And all the interviews and discussions seem to start with the same question: Have you seen the movie?
Heres a sample of some recent despatches from the frontline of Americas re-invigorated drug debate:
* Wed 14th March: Washington. Capitol Hill. Senate debates drug strategy. Senator Patrick Leahy opens the debate: As someone who has long supported efforts to reduce the demand for drugs, I was struck when the drug tsar played by Michael Douglas in the film questions the lack of emphasis placed on drug treatment. Senator John McCain tells an interviewer afterwards: It had a very powerful effect. It caused me to rethink our policies and priorities. Bernard Aronson, a former assistant secretary of state adds: I think the movie has captured the mood of Washington and the nation.
* Wed 14th March: New York. Phoenix House. Americas largest non-profit drug treatment provider. Spokesman, Peter Kerr, says of the film: It was the right thing at the right time. Until recently, if you wanted to talk to members of Congress about drug treatment, there would be a long sigh as they privately concluded, Im not going to spend any of my political chits on this because I dont see the percentage in it.
* Thurs 15th March: Los Angeles. Former drug tsar, Barry McCaffrey, and his assistant Robert Housman, pen a joint letter to LA Times about Traffic. They write: All this makes great entertainment. But it is as accurate as saying The Brady Bunch was a portrait of real life in America. The fact is our national strategy is working The paper is inundated with letters disputing this.
* Tues 18th March: California. Kevin Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy tells the Washington Post: The film has moved the debate over drugs from the op-ed pages into the popular culture. Steven Soderburgh has tapped into the publics unease about what government is doing.
* Mon 19th March: ABC. Nightline. ABCs flagship current affairs show Nightline begins broadcasting five consecutive nightly shows about drug trafficking as a result of the movie Traffic. At 150mins of programming, it is remarked that this is more air time than the movie itself. Presenter Ted Koppel explains: One of the first question I wanted to raise with people, customs officials or DEA people, is, Have you seen the movie, and how does it compare to reality? They all had the same reaction: this movie gets it right, and what it gets right above everything else is the interconnection between and among the growers, the traffickers and the consumers. It never lets you believe if you could just get rid off the growers, the problem would be over, or if we could just get rid of the traffickers, the problem would be over. This is a demand-generated problem.
* Mon 19th Mar: CNN. Showbiz Reports Today. Interview with DEA Agent, Vince Rice, who advised Steven Soderburgh on Traffic. He says: The stories are accurate. It gave you the feel of being out there on the surveillance. But theres almost 2000 miles of border, and to actually monitor all of it is a futile attempt.
* Tues March 20th: Washington. The White House. Spokesman, Scott McClellan, underlines the changing climate of the drug debate when he signals that the new administration favoured a balanced approach to combat drugs based on education, treatment and law enforcement.
* Wed March 21st: CNN. Live Today. Lou Waters interviews Americas most high profile critic of its drug laws, New Mexican Governor Gary Johnson and anti-drugs campaigner Betsy Glick. Lou Waters: Have you seen the movie? Governor Johnson: I have. And I agree with your poll today, that the war on drugs is a miserable failure because its being waged against 80 million Americans who have done illegal drugs. This is a war on ourselves. Were never going to win it. Betsy Glick: One of the things the movie Traffic has really highlighted is, we can stifle the supply side but if we dont stop the demand for drugs, we are never going to be able to resolve this epidemic.
* Wed 21st March: CNN. Inside Politics. Former drugs tsar, Barry McCaffrey and the man he cat-called Puff Daddy, Governor Gary Johnson, square up on air. McCaffrey claims that the US is moving in the right direction with its drug policies. Johnson states that by no figment of the imagination is this something that were winning. This is a war against ourselves.
* March 28th: US Supreme Court meets to decide whether medical necessity is a permissible justification for violating federal drug-possession laws. The case has been triggered by the 1996 Proposition passed in California and Arizona supporting medical use of marijuana. Last year, Alaska, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, Maine and Washington states all passed similar ballots. Hawaii becomes the first state Legislature to approve medical marijuana. These nine states, plus all of America awaits the outcome.
Part of the success of Traffic has been its timing. America has undergone much soul-searching in recent years about the consequences of its anti-drugs strategy. Another, timely, high-profile survey which made everyone sit up and take notice, conducted in February by the influential Pew Research Centre, found that 74 per cent of Americans believe that they are losing the war against drugs. Oh boy, that one hit home.
In tune with Traffics alternative message of treatment, the same survey also discovered that just over half of Americans (52 per cent) thought drug use should be treated as a disease rather than a crime (35 per cent). This was seen as an encouraging step forward by many.
Like in the movie treatment-versus-enforcement has been pretty much the extent of the drug debate. Those, like Governor Gary Johnson, who have argued that marijuana use, for example, is perfectly normal and not a disease are still very much voices in the wilderness. (Marijuana is classified as a Class 1 drug in the States - on a par with cocaine and heroin.)
But the countrys avowed priority of law enforcement, rather than treatment, is being seriously questioned now. There is a scene near the end of Traffic which tapped into this mood, caught the publics imagination, and who knows, may eventually go down as one of the most influential scenes in film history.
Its the press conference scene where Michael Douglas, as the new drug tsar, begins to read out a prepared speech about the importance of winning the war on drugs. But he cant do it. He puts down the speech, turns to leave the room, and his career, and sighs: I cant do this. If there is a war on drugs, then our own families have become the enemy. How can you make war on your own family?
Soderburgh had hit the bullseye. Americas policy of incarcerating drug offenders has gone out of control. America has 5 per cent of the worlds population but 25 per cent of the worlds prisoners. There are half a million drugs offenders in prison at any one time, a quarter of the prison population, and more than the entire prison population of Western Europe.
In New York, for instance, the draconian Rockefeller Laws have seen the prison population leap from 13,000 when they were introduced in 1973 to 70,000 today. These laws give mandatory minimum sentences of 15 years to life, even for first offenders, convicted of selling two ounces or possessing four ounces of cocaine or heroin.
On Tuesday, over 1500 people descended on Albany NY, to support Drop The Rock, a campaign seeking to repeal the Rockefeller laws. Many wore the striped reproductions of old prison uniforms as they marched to the Capitol steps behind rap group, The Wu Tang Clan. They had come to hear the sad, harrowing tales of children, who had been brought before legislators, whose depressing stories explained the brutal consequences of this tough sentencing policy.
Sha-king Graham, 19, from the South Bronx, told how both his parents were drug addicts who were in and out of prison for years on drugs offences. He was born addicted to crack. He was abused in a series of foster homes. One of his sisters was killed in a confrontation with police only minutes after her drug-dealing boyfriend gave her a gun to hold. Ive seen it all, he said, I think Im just numbed to my surroundings.
These kids told the law-makers that 94 per cent of the drug offenders in New York state prisons were black or Latino yet all studies show that the majority of drug users and dealers are white. They claimed the laws are blatantly racist.
This is the reality of the drug wars on the streets of America. Its victims arent just drug users. This policy of harsh sentencing has torn apart families and communities.
The economics of the war on drugs are also coming under scrutiny, especially as the world economy slows down and America looks into the teeth of a possible recession. The cost of keeping drug offenders behind bars, at an average cost of £32,000 per annum, runs at around $16 billion a year. Thats just under the annual budget of the Scottish Parliament.
When this is added to the $20 billion a year spent to intercept drugs coming into the country, and policing the problem at home, the scale of the economic burden of the drug war becomes more apparent. The total federal bill for the war against drugs, at home and abroad, is now estimated to run at a colossal $70-$80 billion a year.
If this was making inroads into the problem then many Americans would reluctantly accept this as a necessary evil. But it isnt. Despite US Government drug agents seizing 132 tonnes of cocaine in 1999 there is little evidence it reduced the supply of the drug on the street. In the last ten years the number of regular cocaine users has stayed steady at 3.5 million users. In the same period the number of heroin users has increased from 650,000 to 900,000.
Under the eight-year Clinton administration, the number of cannabis users arrested totalled 4,175, 357 - a world record for any country. It is ironic that in a last interview with Rolling Stone magazine the outgoing president said: I think most small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalised in most places and should be. We really need a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment.
The second timely thread of the film Traffic is the futility, the widespread corruption, and the dollars spent fighting a losing battle against drugs in Latin America, particularly in Mexico and Colombia. Two weeks before Traffic opened in the States, the first helicopters began spraying Colombian coca crops as part of the innocuous-sounding Plan Colombia. The military initiative, costing $1.3 billion per year, is to spray a deadly fungicide on the Colombian coca growing fields to try and wipe out production.
However, eye-witness reports claim that this simplistic attempt to tackle the problem on the supply side has been a disaster. Poverty-stricken farmers lives are being ruined and the coca-producing gangsters are simply packing up their arsenal of terror and moving across the border into neighbouring countries like Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. Coca is a crop that can be harvested five times a year, is easy to transport, easy to grow, and has little overheads. Poor peasants can be easily persuaded to plant the crop - either by fists full of dollars or guns to the temple. Usually both.
Once the crop spraying has ended in Colombia the coca growers are expected to return. The huge vested interests of the warring factions in Colombias 35-year civil war - the leftist guerrillas of FARC and the paramilitary armies assembled by rich Colombian landowners - will see to it that the bright green coca leaves will flourish once more. Supply will always satisfy demand. It is doubtful if the laws of free market economics will be overturned at the behest of Washingtons wishful thinking.
In many ways, Mexico, with its chronic drug-trafficking problems and endemic corruption, is the movies deeply flawed central character. £50 billion of illegal drugs crosses the Mexican border into America every year. That buys a lot of police officers, customs officials, soldiers, drug enforcement agents and politicians.
When the film opened in Mexico two weeks ago it broke all box office records, showing on 250 screens nationally to critical acclaim.
Its so real its scary, said Maria de Jesus Ortega, a 28 year old vet, articulating what most Mexicans felt after seeing it. It reflects what young people and families here live through. Most praised the films choice of an honest Mexican cop as its hero.
The Traffic storyline, where the Mexican general chosen to head the drug enforcement turns out to work for one of the major drug cartels, was no fiction either. The character of the corrupt army general in the movie was based on ex-drug tsar Barry McCaffreys former ally in the cross border drug wars, General Jesus Gutierrez Rebello. McCaffrey described Rebello as an honest man and a no-nonsense commander. Rebello was later arrested for working with Amado Fuentes, one of Mexicos most feared drug barons.
The endemic corruption associated with drug money is nothing new here. But for a country which has previously had a reputation for holding back on criticising official institutions, Mexico, like America, is currently undergoing some intense self-examination.
Apparently, nobody was more affected by the mood generated by the movie than Mexicos President Vicente Fox. The same day as Traffic was released in his countrys cinema halls, President Fox dropped a bombshell when he told two Mexican newspapers that legalising all drugs was the only way to win the expensive and bloody war against narcotics trafficking. When asked by the newspaper Unomasuno to confirm that he agreed with the statements made by his top police officials that legalisation is the only way to win the war on drugs he said: Thats true, thats true, thats true.
Uruguays President, Jorge Batlle Ibanez, went even further. He told the Washington Post that he intended to use the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City (20-22 April) to raise the issue of legalising drugs as a legitimate way of fighting international drug cartels. Imagine the money you spend to impede drug traffic and imagine that huge amount of resources on education for the people who really need help. The President has gone on record as saying: Have you watched Traffic? Go tomorrow.
Ay carumba! Ill bet Steven Soderburgh never expected all of this. But hes enough of a realist to know that change wont come quick and his movie has only been a catalyst so far. The war against drugs is big business. There are powerful vested interests on all sides. Change will be a slow process.
Prija Haji, director of Free At Last, a community drugs resources project in California, sums it up. A lot of times the political will lags behind public opinion and the pendulum has swung so far in the one direction in the war on drugs - with huge amounts of resources dedicated to interdiction, incarceration and enforcement - it is going to take a great force for it to swing back.