Breaking the Taboo

"A $2.5 trillion war... forty-four million Americans arrested... a $320 billion black market" - these are the crushing figures that greet viewers of the latest documentary about the War on Drugs, Breaking the Taboo.

“A $2.5 trillion war... forty-four million Americans arrested... a $320 billion black market” – these are the crushing figures that greet viewers of the latest documentary about the War on Drugs, Breaking the Taboo. Produced by Sam Branson's Sundog and Brazilian Spray Filmes, the documentary presents a polished yet urgent portrayal of the devastating cost of the global battle against drugs, and narration by Morgan Freeman adds its usual gravitas. This film thrusts the truths about the toll of the international drug war into the mainstream and onto the people – all people, everywhere.

While the pursuit of the drug industry by law enforcement seems ages-old, the film reminds us that it was President Richard Nixon who started the whole mess back in 1971. That era of American pot prohibition was to be a defining one: the president was dealing with the Vietnam War, as well as the civil rights movement at home. Peaceful protests were rife with pot-smoking hippies, and heroin-addicted veterans were returning to American soil. Nixon responded with a harsh crackdown, the effects of which are still felt today.

In the 1970s, the American appetite for drugs fueled trafficking efforts between Central- and South America and the northern continent. From Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and others northward through Mexico, the States and Canada, smuggling lanes were being established or even more heavily-traveled. As techniques became more involved, quantities increased and the street supply of certain drugs began to terrify the authorities. Breaking the Taboo outlines the convoluted history between the United States, international governments and the farmers, producers, traffickers and users of the drugs.

Former President Bill Clinton adds his take to the narrative

The United Nations Conventions on Drugs delineated the pressure to which the United States government was subjecting other ruling powers. All possession, transporting, selling or production of illicit drugs was outlawed – on a global scale – due to American moral objection and persuasion. The government decided to wage the war, and recruited United Nations members to help them enforce it. These policies crystallized the 'zero tolerance' approach that has caused so many social problems around the world.

Once the DEA became involved the fight spilled across borders, draining law enforcement, military and legal resources in other countries and creating generations of habitual prison offenders and drug addicts. Crop spraying is defoliating and poisoning the land, rendering it useless to already struggling families and robbing them of their industry. To make matters worse, the cartels, smugglers and dealers exploded with creative approaches to their illegal activities in an attempt to evade authorities from any country who might imprison them. Prices increased exponentially with the prison population, in some cases, and the violent crime and murder now associated with the drug war began to grip the countries to the south.

Even Asian nations reconciled their policies with American opinion; it is no secret that the prohibition of opium poppies in Nepal, another brainchild of Nixon's, created generations of future heroin, morphine and opium addicts. Afghanistan has become the world's largest producer of heroin since the war began in 2001, leading to crisis-level addiction in Russia. Again, the financial cost also increases, as countries struggle to deal with new drug epidemics and fund rehabilitation and treatment options on a national scale.

The global destruction caused by the War on Drugs is detailed in Breaking the Taboo

The numbers are horrifying: Pablo Escobar's cocaine reign over Colombia – and the ensuing battle between the drug lord's “a bribe or a bullet” edict and the local and American authorities – resulted in “over 52,000 violent deaths in two years.” America's intervention into Mexico's violent trafficking struggles, the Mérida Initiative, cost former President Felipe Calderón over a billion dollars since 2008. Military and federal police enforcement have utilized over 50,000 troops against the cartels, yet drug-related murders have surpassed 47,000 since 2006, when Calderón first waged Mexico's War on Drugs. Jorge Castañeda, Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Affairs (2000 – 2003), suggests that military force has exacerbated the situation: “The war has created the situation – the situation did not create the war.”

Most Cannabis offenders in America are arrested for simple possession and overcrowd prisons with a harmless, hassle-free work force. Prisoners are also exposed to far more drugs and criminality while locked up than when out on the street, preparing them for even more criminality (if they so choose) upon release. In Breaking the Taboo, former prisoner and author Anthony Papa asks, “If you can't control drug use in a maximum-security prison, how could you control drugs in a free society?”

Arrest, incarceration, familial separation, corruption, poverty, kidnappings, asset seizure, violence and death are all common fallout of the drug war. Such atrocities are the unfortunate ties that bind us all together – regardless of your occupation, view towards Cannabis, religious affiliation, etc. This documentary forces the plight of drug war victims into the public consciousness, as the human toll alone could classify the War on Drugs as having reached epidemic proportions. In addition, if the government's battle against illicit substances is draining our resources and overcrowding our prisons, why do we still have national issues with drugs? What about the heroin crowds in the 1970s? Or the crack and cocaine epidemics of the 1980s? Designer drugs, chemical cocktails of questionable origin, plagued the 1990s and meth has been rotting suburbs in America for decades.

As stated in the film, we have fewer Marines than prison guards, and more incarcerated citizens than China does. Until America is no longer the world's largest consumer of illegal drugs, with the highest incarceration rate, perhaps we are in no position to lead from the front lines of the global drug war.

Breaking the Taboo

Watch for free at www.breakingthetaboo.info.

Directed by: Cosmo Feilding Mellen and Fernando Grostein Andrade

Produced by: Sundog Pictures / Spray Filmes

Duration: 58:09

Release date: USA – December, 2012 (Brazil, 2011)