Soderbergh's trying to stun us, to overwhelm us, to dump a load of information on us and get us to just talk about how absurd and complicated and impossible this thing that we're still fighting as a nation is. But he always knowingly undercuts the most heavy-handed of it; when one character goes off on a tirade against two DEA agents, one of them asks him if he thinks he's on "Larry King Live."

That's why a film like "Traffic" is so important. Movies with social or political agendas rarely accomplish much. Oliver Stone never got the files he demanded at the end of "JFK." "Fight Club" probably didn't dent Ikea's take. And people still smoke cigarettes and watch "60 Minutes" despite "The Insider."

But debates about the power of pop culture -- does it reflect or direct society? -- are better left to dorm rooms. These movies do spark national conversations, and if there's going to be any real change in American drug policy it's going to have to come from the bottom up. After many, many conversations -- when legalization, or at least decriminalization, becomes self-evident.

Some, like the folks at NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), think that there's a major shift in the way we as a country think about drugs. They'll point to good signs, like Republican Gov. Gary Johnson in New Mexico, who favors legalizing marijuana and heroin, or medical marijuana referendums in California and Arizona. And now they can point to "Traffic." But realistically we're going to be rolling joints in the dark for a long time.

Most politicians still can't afford to look soft on drugs. In this year's presidential election, for example, only Ralph Nader and Libertarian Harry Browne broached the subject. Because of his didn't-inhale fiasco, Bill Clinton hadn't much to say on the subject until very recently, in the 11th hour of his presidency, when he suggested that we at least look at decriminalizing pot. And now we've got a president-elect with a similar problem: George W. Bush's "youthful indiscretions" and the Republican Party's law-and-order platform will likely keep any drug reform out of the executive branch.

But as the small documentary "Grass" pointed out this summer, it was middle-class families losing their children to prison who pushed Nixon to relax drug laws in the early '70s -- when some states decriminalized marijuana.

The real drug czar knows that a major part of the war on drugs is a war of images and messages. With the Partnership for a Drug Free America and the most sophisticated advertising agency in the world, it spends millions on advertising, inserting messages into television shows and magazines and even fighting popular referendums. "Traffic" is a cannon shot from the other side.

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