bellelo "traffic"

In my opinion, the “war on drugs” will never be won in terms of individual, social, and political levels. Americans are spending more money on drugs than ever before. The government spends more money to fight drugs and incarcerate drug users and dealers. This policy, fueled by over a trillion of our tax dollars has had little or no effect on the levels of drug addiction among our fellow citizens, but has instead resulted in a tremendous increase in crime and in the numbers of Americans in our prisons and jails. With 4.6% of the world's population, America today has 22.5% of the world's prisoners. After all the destroyed lives and after all the wasted resources, prohibited drugs today are cheaper, stronger, and easier to get than they were thirty-five years ago at the beginning of the so-called "war on drugs".

In the film Traffic, we see the Wakefield family suffering from the effects of drugs in the world. Caroline Wakefield is the daughter of Robert Wakefield, who is the head of the National Drug Control. There are many scenes of Caroline doing drugs with her friends but the main one is when her friend overdoses on drugs and dies. They try to rush there friend to the hospital and leave the body out front, but are caught in the action by the police. Robert Wakefield soon discovers that the drug addiction is in their own home. He tries to clip his daughters wings, but as the movie progresses she become worse and worse. Her father soon places her in a rehab facility. She runs away from there and starts up her bad habits again. They begin a frantic search for his missing daughter and this is when Robert Wakefield begins to realize the many problems associated with this “war on drugs.”
Seth brings Robert to where the lower class of society lived in search for his daughter. Robert asks Seth how he could ever bring his daughter into these streets. His response was that these people were good citizens just like Mr. Robert himself, but they would do whatever they needed to support their families, even if it meant selling drugs to make ends meet. I believe that at this point Robert finally understands that this is not a quick problem he can fix by changing a few policies and rules. He realizes that you have to look at the situation from a whole and take in all the possibilities of why this problem is what it is today.