Mike Trace - does the criminalization of drug users work?

Since leaving a secondment to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in January 2003, Mike Trace has been working as an independent consultant. From June 2001 to November 2002, he was the Director of Performance at the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse, a special health authority charged with overseeing the expansion and improvement of the substance abuse treatment sector in England.

From November 1997 to June 2001, he was the Deputy UK Anti-Drug Co-ordinator. This role involved giving advice to UK government ministers on all aspects of drug policy, the creation of the 10 year strategy, Tackling Drugs To Build A Better Britain, and overseeing itÕs implementation. Previous to this, Mike worked in and managed projects tackling drug-related offending for many years. From 1987 to 1995 he was Head of the Criminal Justice Service at The Cranstoun Projects, one of the largest independent sector providers of drug services. In 1986 he worked for the California Youth Authority on rehabilitation for drug-using offenders in the USA. Mike was a member of the Criminal Justice Working Group of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) from 1992 to 1995 and was a full member of ACMD since 1996. From 1995 to 1997, he was Chief Executive of the Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust (RAPT) and Chair of the Criminal Justice Forum of the Standing Conference on Drug Abuse.

Mike has chaired United Nations technical committees on the drugs issue and was for 2 years Chairman of the Lisbon based, European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction where he was responsible for overseeing the collection and analysis of objective, reliable information concerning drugs and drug addiction at a European level.

Mike was interviewed at the International Harm Reduction Conference in Warsaw, 2007.