"Traffic"

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews the film "Traffic", which tells four stories simultaneously which all relate to the central issue of drugs. They bring up such issues as why drugs are grown in poor countries like Mexico and then smuggled into richer countries like the United States, why desperate people enter the drug trade to make a living and why huge cartels have come into being to oversee the drug trade. It examines how the overall effect is to emphasize how futile the situation is, with everyone going through the motions though there is no end in sight. If one cartel is eliminated, another one appears. So as long as there are users, there will be sellers. So long as drugs are illegal, there will be an economic incentive to fill the need.

From the Paper:

"Demand for drugs is elastic over time, rising and falling according to social attitudes, economic realities, and specifically the number of users. The pervasive nature of the drug problem is seen in the film as users come from all walks of life, many simply experimenting or rebelling, others turning to drugs as a means of escape from the horrors of their existence. Caroline Wakefield is a daughter of privilege, but she begins using drugs because others in her social group use them. These young people are rebelling against society or against parents they do not understand or who do not understand them. For many, experimentation is all that is involved. For some, like Catherine, using drugs taps into some psychological predisposition toward addiction, and the girl sinks further into the drug world and soon cares for nothing except her supply."

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