This policy operates in Australia under the trade name of tough on drugs. Come every election, the major political parties compete to show who is really tougher on drugs. From the opening to the closing frame, the film depicts a sense of relentless inevitability. Lawyers, judges, politicians, narcotics officers, drug traffickers, drug addicts, families of drug users, treatment staff and anti-drug tsars all play their roles in a totally dysfunctional system. The film is built up of a series of tableaux.
Traffic interweaves three main stories.
A Mexican policeman becomes trapped in a vicious battle between rival cocaine traffickers, learning in the process that official corruption goes to the country's top drug law enforcement officer. Meanwhile, the wife of a wealthy San Diego businessman arrested on serious and well-documented drug trafficking charges fights unscrupulously to preserve her family and its elegant lifestyle. Linking these three plots is the past, present and future failure of the war against drugs. Much of the film was based on real events. Some of the cast and the screenwriter have had their own brush with addiction.