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UK: Up in smoke
Alan Travis The Guardian
Wednesday 12 Dec 2001 When Tony Blair appointed his first US-style drugs tsar, Downing Street was happy to see the tabloid press portray Keith Hellawell, the former West Yorkshire chief constable, and his deputy Mike Trace as Britain's new "drug busters". Many of those involved in fighting drug abuse had different expectations. They knew both men as effective campaigners who were prepared to think radically. There were hopes that their arrival might trigger fundamental change in Britain's drugs policy. But such hopes were dashed, and reformers had to wait four years - until David Blunkett's arrival at the Home Office - to see any movement. Now, in his first media interview since leaving the job of deputy drugs tsar, Trace has given the Guardian an inside account of what went wrong. Things were fine for the first six months after his and Hellawell's appointment in October 1997, he says. "Our instinct was that the most important thing was to develop a managerially strong drugs strategy. We didn't want to hit the ground running with big political controversies. We wanted to consult the field on sensible treatment and prevention policies." Looking back, Trace, a prison drugs charity worker before his appointment, thinks that was right. "During that period, Alastair Campbell [Tony Blair's press secretary] and the No 10 machine said they wanted us to 'think outside the box', but changes to the law on drugs were not on the cards. It was no coincidence that, in the days following our appointment, two separate cabinet ministers made speeches ruling that out." Trace says that Blair and Campbell were keen to maintain the "we won't go soft on drugs" media image. But behind the scenes, No 10 was surprisingly happy to let the pair get on with the job - "as long as Keith gave a speech every now and again along the lines of, 'Trust me, I'm a copper.'" As the new drugs strategy developed, serious new Treasury funds became available to develop prevention and treatment services. But as the money began to flow, and Hellawell's media profile grew, his and Trace's shared ambition for more radical change went out of the window. "That's when Keith and I fell apart," recalls Trace. "I don't think anything particular went wrong. We carried on with our agenda, but it was clear that what I had hoped to move on to once we had established the strategy - the issue of what to do about cannabis, for example - was not possible. "The political, ministerial atmosphere became more restrictive. Keith had decided that sticking to a line of 'saving the UK from the scourge of drugs' was more popular with ministers." The tone of Hellawell's speeches began to change and, privately, he was no longer willing to discuss more radical reforms. Trace had hoped they would move on to measures that concentrated on reducing the harmful effects of drugs and so downgrade what he calls the "doomed attempt" to halve drug use. "The crucial balance in drug policy is the relative prioritisation of resources aimed at, respectively, reducing the use of drugs or reducing the harm caused by their use. Despite setting off in the right direction, it is now clear to me that we are still spending too much on the former." The relationship particularly foundered, says Trace, when the drugs tsar "shamelessly" used a New Zealand study on the controversial "gateway theory" as the basis for concern about cannabis - despite all the evidence to the contrary. In October 1999, the scene inside Whitehall changed when Mo Mowlam was appointed the new minister in charge of the Cabinet Office's drug coordination unit. She had a strong gut feeling that something had to change. "She had a very liberal approach," says Trace. "She just felt she wanted to do something to move in line with public opinion, particularly on the medicinal use of cannabis. Key ministerial colleagues Jack Straw [then home secretary] and Alan Milburn [health secretary] were not comfortable with this liberal instinct and opposed Mo's attempts to move in that direction." The policy leaders got on with the work involved in expanding the drug treatment programme because it was one of the few things they could all agree on. But matters came to a head over publication of the Police Foundation report on drugs law reform. The inquiry, chaired by Viscountess Runciman, called for relaxation of the laws on cannabis and ecstasy. Trace says that Straw took control of the government's response. "As history will tell, we rebutted its key recommendations within 24 hours," he says. "Mo was too much of a loyalist really to make a stink about that, but basically she did not have a say in it, although she was nominally in charge of drugs policy." It was the only time they all sat down in Blair's Downing Street parlour to discuss drugs policy. The prime minister told Mowlam that he knew she had strong views, and might even turn out to be right, but he was too concerned about how a liberal line might play with the press and public. Blair indicated that his personal sympathies lay closer to Straw's position. "End of chat, and that was it for the next two years," says Trace. Mowlam had asked the Cabinet Office drugs unit to respond to the Police Foundation report by drawing up a paper with a full cost-benefit analysis of drugs legalisation and taxation, including heroin. It was dubbed the "nuclear option". Straw had countered with a request that the civil servants take a "low level routine look" instead at the possible impact of a slightly lighter touch in enforcing the ban on cannabis. Mowlam responded, in turn, by arguing for Straw's paper to spell out the implications of decriminalisation as well. Was the nuclear-option paper ever written? "No - Jack won," says Trace. "What the officials actually did was a relatively low key paper on how many million quid could be saved if we arrested fewer people for cannabis. The committee looking at the Police Foundation's recommendations never got a paper back on the reclassification of cannabis." If Mowlam had lost the battle to look at decriminalisation of cannabis, she persevered for another few months with efforts to try to bring forward its use for therapeutic purposes. "We had another six to nine months of Mo trying to bring up medicinal cannabis and of being ignored," says Trace. "It contributed to her general view that it was time to leave and that it was no fun any more. It ended some months after the Police Foundation report with Mo writing a letter to Tony Blair, saying she recognised that most colleagues did not agree with her on this, but time would prove her right." One of the major tasks for Hellawell was national coordination of government drugs policy. For years, the British effort - as in many other countries - has been weakened by constant battles between criminal justice agencies and the Department of Health over the policy aims. "It had become clear to us that having outsiders like us trying to run the show was not going very well," says Trace. "In my view, the civil service refused to work for us. It was obvious by the time the [2001 general] election was coming up that having outsiders with no direct powers, overseeing the implementation of a complex interdepartmental programme, was not working." In the event, Blunkett's Home Office took over the role of the Cabinet Office's drugs unit after the election. Hellawell was kept on as a special adviser, but in a reduced role, trying to make a difference at international level. Blunkett took the step that Straw had been unwilling to do and announced his support for reclassifying cannabis so that it would no longer be an arrestable offence to possess a small quantity. What of a final verdict on the drugs tsar? "Keith, in the first year, worked like a dog and was committed to what he was trying to achieve; I think that was a great time for him," says Trace, who is now performance director at the national treatment agency, set up by the government to raise standards of treatment for substance misuse. "As time passed, I think he became disengaged from the hard slog of implementation, concentrating on appearances only. It is a shame because there is more to him than that. In the last year he attracted a lot of criticism. The drug strategy we developed contained some crucial programmes that need to be followed through. It would be disappointing if this work - reducing drug-related crime, health problems and social exclusion - loses momentum under the new arrangements."
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