Pubdate: Mon, 19 Mar 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
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Author: James Barron

Media Talk: 'Nightline' to Devote a Full Week to Drugs

Ted Koppel is the first to say that "Nightline" this week will be 
journalism imitating art: five nights about drug trafficking inspired 
by the Steven Soderbergh film "Traffic." That will be 150 minutes of 
"Nightline," three minutes more than the entire film. But that 
includes the commercials.

"It's not the movie that got me to do five nights, it's the subject," 
Mr. Koppel said last week. Mr. Koppel sounded as if he had questions 
about the consequences of laws mandating tough sentences for drug 
offenders. "We've got more than two million people in prison in this 
country, more on a per capita basis than in any other country in the 
world, and the majority are in for drug-related crimes," he said.

Moviegoers who watch "Nightline" on ABC may have a sense of the past 
revisited as Mr. Koppel covers much of the same ground that "Traffic" 
did.

"One of the first questions I wanted to raise with people, customs 
officials or D.E.A. people, is, `Have you seen the movie, and how 
does it compare to reality?' " Mr. Koppel said.

"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 we could just get rid of 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."
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