Mike Trace

Mike Trace
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Born	Michael Trace Bristol, U.K.
Alma mater	University of West of England
Occupation	Chief Executive Officer
Website	www.forwardtrust.org.uk

Mike Trace has since 2004 been the chief executive officer of The Forward Trust but from 1997 until 2004 was a senior figure in national and international drug policy including serving for four years as the UK government’s Deputy UK Anti-Drug Co-ordinator (Drug Czar) under Tony Blair.

Trace has worked for almost 40 years with some of the most marginalised people in the United Kingdom and abroad. Throughout he has been motivated by the knowledge that people who are often demonised and feared, including people who are homeless, those struggling with addiction, and prisoners – are often themselves victims of abuse and neglect as children, or trauma and violence as adults and that they deserve a chance to turn their lives around.

As Deputy UK Anti-Drug Co-ordinator (Drug Czar) his duties included the creation of the UK’s first National Drug Strategy and the oversight of its early years of implementation.

From 2000 to 2003, Trace was President of the European Union drugs agency, the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA); Director of Performance at the National Treatment Agency, and Chief of the Demand Reduction section at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

In 2004, Trace returned to managing and delivering treatment and support services to people struggling with addiction. Following an interim role as CEO of the Blenheim in West London, he took up his current post as chief executive of The Forward Trust (then RAPt) at the end of 2004.

Trace has accompanied Forward Trust patron HRH the Princess of Wales on several visits to prisons, introducing her to groups of prisoners and Forward Trust support services. HRH the Princess of Wales is a campaigner for better mental health and has a deep and compassionate interest in the work of the Forward Trust and its Taking Action on Addiction campaign.

Early Life

Trace grew up on a housing estate on the outskirts of Bristol.

He saw many of his friends get into trouble with the law, or die young, and was destined to leave school at 16, but inspirational teachers encouraged him to read books, take A levels and go to college.

After graduating, Trace backpacked around the world to see other countries and cultures. He hitchhiked to Africa, spent a year in South-East Asia, and two stints in California – mixing the beach life with his first experience of work with offenders (in this case teenage gang members in the early 1980’s).

Career

Around 1984, Trace moved to London and started earning money as a motorbike delivery rider. He had no idea how to build a career, but knew he wanted to help people living on the margins of society, so he started volunteering at a day centre for the unemployed, and at the first Centrepoint night shelter just off Shaftesbury Avenue.

Trace was homeless himself for a few months, but his first paid job came with accommodation – working in a hostel for released prisoners in Muswell Hill, North London. Many of the residents had newly discovered Heroin, the London version of the Trainspotting generation. This gave him a crash course in understanding addiction, and how the drug market was starting to dominate the lives of poor and marginalised people.

By 1988, he had started working in the prisons around London as a drug advice worker for the Parole Release Scheme, part of the charity Cranstoun. At that time, the official policy was that illegal drugs could not get into prison, but in fact they were easily available and widely used, a situation that remains to this day.

Trace built his expertise on drugs, crime and rehabilitation through the late 1980s and early 1990s, a subject that received a lot of press and political attention at that time due to rising crime rates, and fears about HIV/AIDS.

Deputy Drug Czar

When Tony Blair and ‘New Labour’ came to power following the 1997 United Kingdom general election, one of their first announcements was to appoint a ‘Drug Czar’ emulating the USA.

The chosen appointee was ex-police chief, Keith Hellawell, who had little expertise on drug use and addiction, so Trace was appointed as the Deputy, in charge of prevention, treatment and health policy.

In the years that followed, they created the first comprehensive national drug strategy around illegal drugs, that became a blueprint for many other countries.

A key element of the strategy was the creation of a national network of addiction treatment services, covering every community and prison in the country, backed up by massively increased funding. This investment led to the creation of a new QUANGO in 2001 – the National Treatment Agency that was tasked with overseeing this unprecedented expansion and delivery of public health and recovery support services for people with drug or alcohol problems.

In the 2000s, the overall level of drug use in society edged downwards, drug related deaths gradually reduced, and drug related crime reduced significantly.

'Have You Ever Used Drugs’ Incident

Trace’s early time as Deputy Drug Czar was marked by controversy around his own history of recreational drug use.

In 1997, it was taboo for politicians or government representatives to admit any past illegal drug use, despite the fact that, even then, almost 30% of UK adults had experimented with illegal drug use at some point in their lives. When Trace was inevitably asked the question by the press, he informed No 10 that he would not lie or avoid the question.

Trace had admitted that he had casually and occasionally used drugs in his youth and was not ashamed of it. This led to serious talks about ending his contract, before he had the chance to achieve much in the job. New Labour ‘spin doctors’ presented the story as a positive indication of his close knowledge of the issue, and a sympathetic interview was conducted by the Daily Mirror.

His drug use history was front page news for a few days but received little negative reaction. Gradually from that time onwards, it became common for politicians to acknowledge youthful experiences with illegal drugs.

The European Union Drugs Agency

With the growing international reputation of the UK drugs strategy approach, in 2000 Trace was offered the role of President of the European Union drugs agency – the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction, based in Lisbon. This involved oversight of the Agency’s development of its research programme, and co-ordinating discussions on drug policy between the (then) 15 member states of the European Union. He held this role for a 3-year mandate, stepping down in 2003.

Rise and Fall – the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

As a result of travelling the world talking to policy makers and reviewing national drug strategies, by the early 2000’s, Trace had developed a clear view that the balance of policies and investment needed to move away from enforcement and punishment, and towards social policy, health and treatment.

Most governments at the time were continuing to pour resources and political support into the ‘War on Drugs’ - military, border control, and law enforcement activities - even though evidence was clear that these were not reducing drug trafficking or levels of consumption.

While still working on the UK drug strategy treatment expansion, Trace was invited to develop a high-level international initiative calling for a critical review of the direction of drug policies. In the spring and summer of 2002 this was developing into a ‘think tank’ style operation – tentatively named ‘Forward Thinking on Drugs’ - mainly funded by the Open Society Foundations, the philanthropic vehicle of the financier George Soros.

Later that year, Trace was approached by the Executive Director of UNODC, Antonio Costa, to become the leader of their Demand Reduction section. This presented Trace with an opportunity to do on the global stage what he had done in the UK – to promote the development of effective drug prevention programmes, and high-quality addiction treatment for everyone who needs it. He took the job in the autumn of 2002 and began to wind down his involvement in Forward Thinking on Drugs.

Trace started to work at the UNODC in Vienna drafting a strategy for the promotion of addiction treatment around the world, and seeking government and philanthropic donors when he was approached one evening by the Daily Mail, who announced they were running a front page story on him the next day. The story, and several other follow up pieces by the polemicist Melanie Phillips, alleged that Trace was at the centre of a shadowy international conspiracy trying to legalise drugs – the Mail headline asked the question ‘Is This the Most Dangerous Man in Britain?’

The Mail story, and the attacks on Trace had been based on a file of emails hacked from his UK government email account – one of the first instances of email hacking, that together with phone hacking was to become a common and much criticised practice in the British press. Responding to the Daily Mail attacks, many authoritarian countries were calling for his removal from his UN role, so he decided to resign, and has not worked in government since.

Although criticism of the dominant ‘war on drugs’ approach was politically controversial 20 years ago, UN positions on drug policy have evolved in the last 20 years and are now similar to the analysis Trace advocated in 2002.

International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC)

Having experienced the low quality of policy debate at diplomatic and political levels of the UN, Trace resolved to get more expert and civil society voices into the functioning of the global drug control system. Over the next few years, he founded and developed the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) - an international network of civil society experts and community organisations, who work together to engage constructively with the UN agencies and institutions to promote effective and humane drug policies.

Despite initial suspicions from national governments, IDPC is now a mature and established voice at the United Nations, with 191 network members in 75 countries across seven continents based in communities and academic organisations, and regularly contributing to United Nations and other international debates on drug policy.

Trace was subsequently involved in the setting up of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, and drafted its first, seminal report, on the problems with the war on drugs, and the need for reform.

Former political and world leaders – Kofi Annan, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Ruth Dreifuss, Obasanjo Obesanjo, George Papandreou, Helen Clark and prominent public figures such as Richard Branson have since worked through the Global Commission to push for a global reset in managing drug markets and consumption.

Given his unique experience of writing, overseeing, and critiquing drug policies and strategies around the world, Trace continues to be called on to offer advice to governments and opposition parties, as well as commissions and committees, in the UK and internationally.

On 30th November 2023 he was an expert witness at the UK Parliament Public Accounts Committee inquiry on Reducing the harm from illegal drugs

Back to his Roots

After resigning from his position at the United Nations in 2004, Trace returned to the UK and his original profession – managing and delivering treatment and support services to people struggling with addiction. Following an interim role as CEO of the Blenheim in West London, he moved back to the Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust (RAPT), a charity that delivered life-changing addiction recovery programmes in some of the toughest prisons in the UK.

In the 18 years since, through a series of mergers and new project developments, this organisation has grown into a large national charity that offers advice, care and inspiration to over 25,000 of the most marginalised people in UK society per year. Forward Trust’s mission is to support people to make transformational changes in their lives, over a third of all staff and volunteers have ‘lived experience’ of addiction or imprisonment.

Views

Mike Trace has worked for almost 40 years with some of the most marginalised people in the United Kingdom and abroad. Throughout he has been motivated by the knowledge that people who are often demonised and feared – the homeless, people struggling with addiction, prisoners – are often themselves victims of abuse and neglect as children, or trauma and violence as adults. He believes that they deserve a chance to turn their lives around.

He believes that people have responsibility for their own actions, but also the potential to confront and overcome the difficulties of their past, to live positive and fulfilling lives. He has witnessed thousands of these transformations, confirming his belief that everyone has the capacity to live a good life.

Social policies that seek to punish people for the chaos and trauma in their lives never work and have usually made problems worse. Trying to deter people from misusing drugs or alcohol by punishing them only adds to the alienation that is at the root of their behaviour. And imprisoning large numbers of people for relatively minor offences only drives them further into a criminal and anti-social lifestyle. These policies make politicians look tough, but in fact they are the opposite – an abdication of responsibility to tackle the difficult root causes of addiction or offending.

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