PBS 'Drug Wars' Chronicles 30 Years

NEW YORK (AP) -- After three decades, the war on drugs is largely a bust. That's one finding of "Drug Wars," an epic exploration into the United States government's battle to stem the flow of illegal drugs.

Examinations of the drug problem are usually framed from the perspective of the users or the cops who bust them on the street.

But the four-hour "Frontline" report, which PBS airs Monday and Tuesday at 9 p.m. EDT, lets viewers hear from high-level government officials and traffickers, drug agents and drug lords, including men who once headed Colombia's notorious Medellin cartel, which the film identifies as the world's largest-ever criminal syndicate.

AT RIGHT: Keith Schuchard, National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free Youth, says "Marijuana's the keystone. It is the gateway drug... If you prevent the usage of marijuana, you really have very little chance of other drugs being used."

AT RIGHT: The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) finally officially agreed with people like Schuchard. In 1984, Nancy Reagan launched her "Just Say No" campaign and became the unofficial spokesperson for the parents' movement.

The campaign focused mostly on white, middle class kids who had not yet tried drugs and relied heavily on private and corporate donations. The Reagan administration actually reduced the percentage of money spent on treatment and prevention by a third between 1981 and 1986.

While the focus continued to be on marijuana and kids, by 1984 an estimated 6.5 million Americans used cocaine at least once a month.

AT RIGHT: At the same time, the Reagan administration tried to force the Colombian government to extradite cocaine traffickers to the U.S. This led to numerous killings of high-ranking Colombian officials who tried to assist the U.S. and resulted in internal terrorism and fighting over the extradition policy. U.S. policy turned Colombia into a war zone.

More than a year in the making, "Drug Wars" takes an inside look at the drug business. The story begins in the first days of Richard Nixon's presidency. "You can imagine the challenge trying to lay out for an audience the last 30 years," says reporter and co-producer Lowell Bergman, adding, "I think people will be surprised that Nixon turns out to be the most effective in terms of getting control of a particular drug, in this case heroin."

In 1970, a controversial program of dispensing to addicts the new synthetic opiate, methadone, was launched by a White House concerned that, outside its door, the nation's capital had become the nation's crime capital. A year after methadone clinics opened around Washington, burglaries had dropped by 41 percent.

The message seemed clear. With treatment, addicts could be helped to overcome their habit. And while they were helped, they no longer had to steal to support that habit -- nor were they supporting illegal drug trade.

AT RIGHT: The United States maintained the extradition policy would work if the Colombians would persist just a little longer. Yet, the course of action turned Colombian into a war zone. Today, there are over a million Colombians who are homeless and out-of-work due to our policies.

Even so, Nixon wasn't ready to launch a national methadone treatment program. Then, a year later, he was shocked to learn of raging heroin use by American troops in Vietnam. This put a far more sympathetic face on the junkie.

AT RIGHT: In one of the boldest attempts on the Colombian government, anti-government forces in partnership with the Medellin cartel attacked the Colombian Supreme Court in 1985. All files containing pending extradition requests were destroyed. Eleven Supreme Court justices were killed. In total, more than 200 people died.

By 1986, there was no end in sight to the violence and no extradition of the Medellin durg lords.

With that, the law-and-order president unveiled a drug program that addressed drug abuse as a sickness, not a crime. And as the sonorous "Frontline" narrator declares, "For the first and only time in the history of U.S. drug policy, treatment supplanted law enforcement for most of the attention and most of the money."

While Bergman insists that "Drug Wars" draws no particular conclusions, he says he and his collaborators were struck by an unexpected argument echoed by virtually every drug enforcement official they talked to: The better strategy is trying to reduce demand rather than shut off supply and punish consumers. Nixon, it seems, had started on the right track.

In the film, former Drug Enforcement Administration head Jack Lawn calls for a new, centralized anti-drug force that devotes a full 90 percent of its budget to education, treatment and prevention. "Would that work? We won't know unless we try it," Lawn says. "But 20 years of doing it the other way certainly has not worked."

In reporting "Drug Wars," Bergman stays safely out of camera range (as usual, "Frontline" has no use for an on-camera personality). But not long ago, his anonymity was shattered. He, of course, is the former CBS News producer whose struggle to get a report about a tobacco industry whistle-blower on "60 Minutes" became the subject of an Oscar-nominated film, "The Insider." Al Pacino played Bergman in the 1999 drama.

Now a free-lance investigative reporter, Bergman is speaking from "Frontline" headquarters in Boston as he puts the final touches on his film and rushes to finish the accompanying, information-rich Web site. "This is an issue that becomes very polarized very quickly," he says of drug policy. "One person says decriminalize them all. Another person says shoot them all."

But what happened to derail Nixon's treatment-oriented strategy? As the 1972 election approached, the White House reverted to a more voter-friendly approach: Get tough on drugs and anyone who does them. With few departures, that has summed up the nation's drug policy ever since. "No one wants to be seen as soft on crime," Bergman explains.

The film compiles some of the consequences. The United States fights the drug war with a bureaucracy that, next year, will total 51 government agencies spending some $20 billion in federal money.

The U.S. prison population has doubled since 1994 to nearly 2 million inmates -- half of whom are jailed on drug-related charges. Meanwhile, the global narcotics business is worth an estimated $400 billion, and rapidly expanding.

"Have we really looked this situation straight in the face," Bergman muses, "where we can figure out what to do?" That is what he hopes "Drug Wars" will arm us for.

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