Pubdate: Mon, 09 Oct 2000
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.
Contact:  P.O. Box 2378, Boston, MA 02107-2378
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Website: http://www.boston.com/globe/
Author: Mark Jurkowitz, Globe Staff

AMBITIOUS LOOK AT 'DRUG WARS'

Deep into the second half of "Frontline"'s two-part documentary on the war 
against drugs, a street dealer named Paul captures its unmistakable message 
with one word: "politics."

After a three-decade battle against the drug trade waged by presidents from 
Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, drug busts have swelled the US prison 
population to nearly 2 million, such nations as Colombia and Mexico have 
been corrupted to their core, and the flourishing narco business is now 
estimated to be a $400 billion enterprise. In its sweepingly ambitious 
four-hour examination of the subject, "Frontline"'s "Drug Wars" (tonight 
and tomorrow from 9 to 11 p.m. on WGBH-TV, Channel 2) succeeds by making a 
painstaking case that the government's tactics of attacking supply rather 
than focusing on treatment and education have bogged the nation down in a 
quagmire that makes Vietnam look like a surgical strike.

Even the old warriors agree. At the end of the series, former Drug 
Enforcement Administration agent Bob Stutman looks into the camera and says 
that beating drugs by enforcement is "an unobtainable objective."

One organizing principle for watching the four hours of "Drug Wars" is to 
heed Paul's mantra of "politics." Viewed as the kind of epic narrative that 
"Frontline" tries to present, the drug war's ill-fated course seems to have 
been charted by a series of pivotal moments driven by political considerations.

Nixon's early emphasis on drug treatment was superceded by his desire to 
run a law-and-order reelection campaign in 1972. Jimmy Carter endorsed the 
decriminalization of marijuana, but a vocal "Parents Movement," united by 
fears of teenagers using pot, helped reorient his administration toward a 
get-tough policy. In Ronald Reagan's tenure, the war on drugs was undercut 
seriously by the war against communism. The 1986 overdose death of college 
basketball star (and Celtics draft pick) Len Bias triggered a political 
frenzy that led to everything from the arming of forest rangers to the 
toughest criminal sentences in history. (Not long after, a blustery Bill 
Bennett became the nation's drug czar and tried to make the issue a moral 
crusade.) And Clinton's desire for a deal on the North American Free Trade 
Agreement interfered with meaningful efforts to attack Mexico's drug industry.

Trying to compress 30 years of collective public policy failure into four 
hours of television seems an invitation for some journalistic license in 
"Drug Wars." In particular, the dramatic juxtaposition of the 1976 teen 
pot-smoking party that spawned the Parents Movement and the collapse of 
Carter's sensible "public health" approach to the problem feels a little 
too pat. The other unavoidable problem in trying to piece together an oral 
history from the drug kingpins, the pols, and the cops is that viewers 
can't be quite sure which of these parties might be taking greater 
liberties with the truth.

But all that pales in light of the impressive breadth of "Drug Wars," which 
manages to interview what seems like every crucial player in the business, 
including Jorge and Juan David Ochoa, leaders of the infamous Medellin 
cocaine cartel. In one understated but remarkable scene, an interviewer 
attempts to get a reluctant Juan David Ochoa to estimate how much money 
he's made in the business. Later, a smuggler named Steve provides a 
riveting, detailed explanation of exactly how you move three tons of 
cocaine from Colombia to California.

"Drug Wars" is at its best simply hammering home the folly of US policy, 
whether it be through footage of American servicemen in Vietnam using their 
weapons as marijuana pipes or by quoting cocaine runner Carlos Toro's 
mocking assessment that the "DEA was just like the sun. ... We have to live 
with it, but we are not that afraid of it."

At the conclusion of "Drug Wars," when Clinton drug czar retired Army 
General Barry McCaffrey trumpets progress and unleashes yet another US 
effort to attack cocaine production in Colombia, one cannot help but recall 
the famous warning to those who ignore the lessons of history. 
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