Marcus Roberts is Director of Policy and Membership at DrugScope, the UK’s leading independent centre of information and advice on drugs and the national membership organisation for the drugs field – and has previously been Head of Policy at DrugScope. He spent nearly three years as Head of the Policy and Parliamentary Unit at Mind, the charity that campaigns for better mental health. Other jobs in the third sector include Policy Manager at Nacro, the Crime Reduction Charity. He was editor of the legal journal ChildRight from 1998 to 2000, and of Safer Society, the journal of crime reduction and community safety, from 2000 to 2002.

Before joining the voluntary sector, Marcus taught politics and philosophy at the Universities of Brighton and Essex, and was an associate lecturer for the Open University, having previously studies politics and philosophy at Lancaster and York. He has a strong interest in human rights issues, and was Baring Foundation Fellow in Philosophy and Human Rights at the University of Essex in 1994. He is the author of numerous publications on social policy issues – as well as on social theory and philosophy – recently including DrugScope’s Drug Treatment at the Crossroads report and a series of reports for the Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Programme. He has recently taken a leading role in campaigning on the Welfare Reform Bill, currently before parliament, raising concerns about proposals to require people identified as having drug or alcohol problems to engage in treatment or risk loss of benefit.