In the week that the film Traffic was released in the UK, a US-backed Colombian army launched an air assault on Colombian coca fields.
Traffic portrays an America blighted by the scar of drugs.
In this film, the Drugs War is a moral fight for decent lives, for both US citizens and Latin Americans. The Drugs War is a simple issue for the US middle classes, anxious about what their kids are getting up to. When it comes to Latin American peasants, the issue is less straightforward. Farmers who turned to coca, the plant from which cocaine is made, to eke out a better subsistence have had their livelihoods destroyed. While there is a demand for drugs in the USA and hungry Latin Americans are keen to supply, the Drugs War can be neither clean nor moral.