Winner 2000

FRONTLINE: Drug Wars

WGBH/Frontline co-production with Rain Media, Inc., and Cam Bay Productions

For more than thirty years the United States government has struggled to stamp out the use of illegal drugs. Despite efforts, drugs thrive on America’s streets, and international drug trafficking has exploded into a multimillion-dollar industry that is an integral part of the world economy. Drug Wars, presented by FRONTLINE in collaboration with National Public Radio, tells the story of this thirty-year war from both sides of the battlefield. Under the direction of senior executive producer David Fanning, executive producer Michael Sullivan, senior producer Sharon Tiller, and series producer Martin Smith, numerous other producers, reporters, and writers, including Lowell Bergman, Doug Hamilton, Kenneth Levis, Brooke Runnette, and Oriana Zill, trace the history of America’s drug way from the Nixon administration through the Clinton years. Woven throughout the narratives are the conflicts between U.S. anti-drug policy and its Cold War policy in Latin America, as well as exclusive interviews with men who headed the once powerful drug cartels and U.S. officials deeply involved in fighting the war over the last three decades. Through these interviews with government officials, drug enforcement agents, drug lords, smugglers and users, this four-hour documentary focuses on the always complicated, intertwined social, cultural and political forces that continue to dominate drug policy in the new millennium. For its exhaustive, perceptive, and sweeping documentary with implications for both existing and future drug enforcement strategies, a Peabody is award to FRONTLINE: Drug Wars.