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U.S. prisons are filled with drug offenders; the number of prisoners tripled over the past 20 years to nearly 2 million, with 60 to 70 per cent testing positive for substance abuse on arrest. The country has spent billions of dollars attacking the problem at its roots. But there is growing consensus that the "war on drug" has been lost. The United States is still the world’’s largest consumer of illegal substances; cocaine continues to pour over the border from Mexico. "Traffic" taps into the national frustration, depicting the horrors of both drugs and the drug war. Without taking sides, the film illuminates the national debate and poses on alternative that Americans seem increasingly willing to consider: finding new ways to treat, rather than merely punish, drug abuse. 　　Policy revolutions―like legalizing narcotics (drugs producing sleep or insensibility) ―remain a distant dream. But there is growing public awareness that the money and energy wasted on trying to check the flow of drugs into the United States might be better spent on trying to control demand instead. Voters in several states are far ahead of the politicians, approving ballot initiatives that offer more treatment opinions. "Drugs courts" that allow judges to use carrots and sticks to compel substance-abuse treatment have grown fifty-fold since the mid-1990s, part of a new understanding that, even with frequent relapses( returns to a formal state), treatment is much less expensive for society than jail and ban. 　　Drug addiction is increasingly being viewed as more a disease than a crime. Science is yielding clues about the "hedonic (of pleasure ) region" of the brain, while breakthrough medications and greater understanding of the mental-health problems that underlie many addictions are giving therapists new tools. 　　Officials across the Continent have already begun shifting their focus from preventing drug flow to rehabilitating (making able to live a normal life again) drug users. The new European Union Drugs Strategy for 2000-2004 makes a commitment to increasing the number of successfully treated addicts. Gemany, Italy and Luxembourg have transferred responsibility for drug policy from their Ministries of the Interior to the Ministries of Health or Social Affairs. In Britain, the government has set up a National Treatment Agency to coordinate the efforts of social-service agencies and the Department of Health. And drug-prevention and support agencies there are getting about 30 percent more funding this year. Changing the main national strategy from attacking drug pushers to rehabilitating addicts won’’t come easy. But slowly, steadily, Americans, like Europeans, seem determined to try. According to the text, U. S. prisoners