Weigh­ing up Hollywood’s fix­a­tion with the War on Drugs

A decade before the Nixon Admin­is­tra­tion pop­u­larised the term ​“War on Drugs”, the emerg­ing coun­ter­cul­ture move­ment saw more recre­ation­al drug use in the Unit­ed States than ever before. One film that best reflects this is Easy Rid­er, which cen­tres around two bik­ers who, after smug­gling cocaine across the bor­der and receiv­ing a large sum for it, decide to ride across the coun­try to New Orleans. Peter Fon­da and Den­nis Hop­per became coun­ter­cul­ture icons for their por­tray­al of two free spir­its in a film that remains syn­ony­mous with non­con­formism and drug use.

Easy Rider’s potent anti-estab­lish­ment mes­sage meant that it did not go down so well with every­one, with Vice Pres­i­dent Spiro Agnew crit­i­cis­ing the film for ​“play­ing right into the hands of the drug cul­ture”. This lev­el of dis­ap­proval from those in pow­er was a sign of things to come. As Jack Nicholson’s George says in the film, ​“But they see a free indi­vid­ual, it’s gonna scare ​’em.”

Two years after the release of Easy Rid­er, the so-called War on Drugs offi­cial­ly began, with Pres­i­dent Nixon declar­ing sub­stance abuse ​“pub­lic ene­my num­ber one”. Enforce­ment was stepped up, as was the pun­ish­ment for those found guilty of tak­ing drugs, while nation­wide adver­tis­ing cam­paigns such as ​‘Just Say No’ sought to dis­cour­age chil­dren from engag­ing in recre­ation­al sub­stance abuse. With this change, drug users were not seen just as rebel­lious, free-think­ing youths by soci­ety, but as out­right crim­i­nals.

Hero­in addic­tion in par­tic­u­lar became a hot-but­ton issue, as depict­ed in Jer­ry Schatzberg’s 1971 flm The Pan­ic in Nee­dle Park. It por­trays a group of hero­in addicts liv­ing in New York City, specif­i­cal­ly focus­ing on the down­fall of a young woman’s life after she is intro­duced to the drug and becomes an addict her­self. Unlike Easy Rid­er, it presents drug addic­tion as high­ly dan­ger­ous and illic­it. Through­out the film, Bob­by (Al Paci­no), a deal­er and user, is shown to have been in trou­ble with the law many times, and ends up being arrest­ed and impris­oned. This har­row­ing dra­ma reflect­ed the hard­er stance soci­ety was begin­ning to take.

The inau­gu­ra­tion of Ronald Rea­gan in 1981 marked a new chap­ter in the War on Drugs, as the Pres­i­dent expand­ed the government’s com­bat­ive mea­sures like nev­er before. Through­out the 1980s, almost $2bn was allo­cat­ed to the effort, with the num­ber of incar­cer­a­tions reach­ing an all-time high. The pub­lic fear of the per­ceived drug prob­lem was also high­er than ever before, with many con­cerned about over­seas influ­ences. Mia­mi in par­tic­u­lar gained a rep­u­ta­tion as the drug cap­i­tal of the world, with many sup­pos­ed­ly migrat­ing from Latin Amer­i­ca to become drug lords there.

Released in 1983, Bri­an De Palma’s Scar­face held a cocaine-smeared mir­ror to soci­ety at the time. The film’s pro­tag­o­nist, Tony Mon­tana (Al Paci­no), starts out as a Cuban migrant work­ing as a low­ly dish­wash­er, but, through smug­gling and deal­ing cocaine, he becomes a pow­er­ful and vio­lent drug king­pin. As well as Cuban, the film also depicts Boli­vian and Colom­bian drug car­tels in Mia­mi, with many of the fic­tion­al sup­port­ing char­ac­ters based on real mem­bers, empha­sis­ing the plight of the city’s offi­cials at the time.

The 1990s saw the US gov­ern­ment become more aggres­sive, often uneth­i­cal­ly so, in its bid to win the War. At the same time, per­haps due to this, pub­lic empa­thy grew for those in the drug busi­ness, as the approval rat­ing for the War plum­met­ed. The first half of the decade also marked the peak of Pablo Esco­bar and the Colom­bian drug cartel’s powers.

Clear and Present Dan­ger explores both of these issues. In the film, Har­ri­son Ford’s Jack Ryan is appoint­ed CIA Act­ing Deputy Direc­tor and asked to over­see oper­a­tions in Colom­bia. How­ev­er, he soon dis­cov­ers that the CIA are keep­ing him in the dark over their covert war against a drug car­tel. Even­tu­al­ly it is revealed that the CIA wants to strike a deal, with the car­tel agree­ing to reduce drug ship­ments to the US in order to make it look like the drug war is being won. In return, the CIA promis­es to cease all oper­a­tions in Colom­bia, a plot point which reflects the sheer des­per­a­tion of the US gov­ern­ment at the time to final­ly make the War seem a suc­cess for themselves.

Since the start of the 21^st cen­tu­ry, the com­mon con­sen­sus has been that this is a war that can nev­er be won and should no longer be fought. In Denis Villeneuve’s 2015 thriller, Sicario, the War on Drugs is pre­sent­ed as a law­less con­flict as opposed to a right­eous bat­tle between good and evil. In the film, Emi­ly Blunt plays a straight-laced FBI agent who joins a spe­cial unit tasked with appre­hend­ing a Mex­i­can drug car­tel. Also in her team are Matt (Josh Brolin) and Ale­jan­dro (Beni­cio Del Toro), two agents with com­par­a­tive­ly ambigu­ous morals.

As the sto­ry unfolds, it becomes clear that they have lost all hope of win­ning the War and are instead sim­ply attempt­ing to restore some order to the drug busi­ness, rather than shut it down com­plete­ly, by hav­ing one car­tel con­trol the entire drug trade in Mex­i­co. As Brolin’s Matt Graver puts it, ​“Until some­body finds a way to con­vince 20 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion to stop snort­ing and smok­ing that shit, order’s the best we can hope for.”

The film’s sequel, Sicario 2: Sol­da­do, car­ries on in much the same cyn­i­cal yet prag­mat­ic vein. With the War on Drugs seem­ing­ly nev­er-end­ing, it will be inter­est­ing to see how Hol­ly­wood con­tin­ues to por­tray this com­plex issue in the years and decades ahead. Just what sort of war they’ll be por­tray­ing is anybody’s guess. As Del Toro says in the first Sicario film, ​“You’re ask­ing me how a watch works. For now we’ll just keep an eye on the time.”