The Real Deal on Dope

The usual rap on TV cop shows is that they trivialize real life-and-death matters into a glossy package of sanitized violence designed to sell soap and soda pop. They give us a world where there are clearly identifiable bad guys around every corner, shootings happen two or three times an hour, and nobody bleeds too much. The result is a public that is either jaded to the point of cynical apathy or paralyzed with paranoia.

There's a lot of truth to that line of criticism. But in the case of the current outbreaks of drug-related violence, it's been the "serious" people in public office and the mainstream media who have trivialized the issues. They are the ones who treat a multibillion dollar international industry as if it were mostly a problem of dark-skinned teenagers shooting each other. They are the ones who offer over-simplified, falsely cathartic solutions like the death penalty.

Meanwhile, for the last five years, the only place in the popular media where you could intermittently find a serious and clear-eyed depiction of the drug problem was, of all things, on a TV cop show. The show was "Miami Vice," which aired its final episode in May.

I'm not claiming that "Miami Vice" was on the whole any kind of socially redeeming public service. It was mostly about loud noises, cool clothes, fast cars, and bad attitudes. I happen to enjoy all of those things. In fact, that's why I watched the show as often as I did. But in the course of depicting two vice cops, Crockett and Tubbs, in their Sisyphean trudge from car-chase to car-chase, "Miami Vice" also gave a depiction of the drug world, from its south Florida epicenter, in which the lines were never clear and the fix was always in.

Here the drug trade was intertwined, as in real life, with U.S. covert military-political adventures and "legitimate" international finances. The recurring theme was one of two honest, even (secretly) idealistic cops whose efforts to stem the tide of white poison were perennially thwarted by nameless, faceless higher-ups. And the higher-ups weren't in the underworld but in the official power structures of government and business.

THE TWO-HOUR FINAL EPISODE was a case in point. Here Crockett and Tubbs were requisitioned by a federal task force to bring a certain fictional, drug-running, Central American military dictator safely to the United States. The deal was that if rescued this transparent Noriega-clone, under siege by his own people, would give information leading to the capture of the top players in the Colombian cocaine cartel.

But when Crockett and Tubbs get the Noriega-figure back to the States, they discover that they've been hustled. The feds don't want the dictator to talk; they want him to stay quiet about his dealings with certain unnamed U.S. government officials at the highest ("read my lips") level.

In another two-hour blockbuster a few years back, Crockett and Tubbs followed the trail of a dope megadeal all the way up to New York City. Using the time-honored investigative principle of "follow the money," they ended up in the boardroom of one of the world's most powerful international banks, interrogating its venerable and oh-so-aristocratic chairman of the board. The banker was played by Julian Beck, guru of the avant-garde Living Theater. Beck was dying of cancer when the episode was filmed, which lent an appropriately ghastly aspect to his character.

In a scene that owed a lot to Ned Beatty's Network boardroom speech, the banker explained to the cops that, while the dope business was certainly unpleasant, it was an unpleasant necessity. In certain heavily-indebted Latin American nations, he said, the cash flow from the drug trade is the only thing preventing a default that could bring down the West's financial house of cards. It's a shame if lives and societies are being destroyed at both ends of the demand-supply cycle, but business is business.

That's the real deal on dope. In this white man's world, it's impossible to believe that a multibillion dollar industry headed by Hispanics and blacks functions efficiently throughout the United States without the aid and/or complicity of the people who own and run this country. In this case the real world is more like the one on television. But what you can do with that knowledge is another question. When the truth lies in seemingly impenetrable shadows, that knowledge can lead not to positive action, but only to more cynicism.

After all, when Crockett and Tubbs did battle with the higher-ups they always lost. It's hard to punch out a shadow. The only way to fight shadows is with light. And at this point the struggle against the drug trade may be mostly one for information, for an end to secrecy in policy-making, law-enforcement, and banking operations.

A good place to start might be with a full disclosure from our new president (and former CIA chief) of all of his South-of-the-border activities in the last 15 years. If he came clean, maybe the kids on the block would, too.

Danny Duncan Collum is a Sojoumers contributing editor.