The courts Morphine made from ‘available materials’

Press, 15 November 1984, Page 33

The courts Morphine made from ‘available materials’

PA Wellington The manufacture of morphine from drugs which were readily available introduced a new factor into the availability of class A and B drugs in New Zealand, Crown counsel, Mr Kenneth stone, has said in the High Court at Wellington.

He was making submissions during the sentencing of Lindsay William Dunne, aged 31, who had earlier pleaded guilty to a charge of manufacturing the class B controlled drug, morphine. Mr Justice Greig sentenced Dunne, unemployed, to six months non-residen-tial periodic detention and put him on probation until May 30, 1986. A special condition of probation ,is that Dunne undertake any course of drug assessment or drug treatment as the probation officer might re-

quire. His Honour said that during a period of 10 months Dunne manufactured on about 10 occasions a total of 20 grams of morphine by extracting the morphine base from readily available materials.

He said that it was apparently a relatively simple operation, but required a considerable quantity of the base elements to produce morphine. Morphine was a class B drug, but from the morphine heroin could be extracted. His Honour said that he acccepted that Dunne was not involved in the next step beyond the morphine, that the manufacture was entirely for his own use, and that there was no sale or other commercial aspect of the matter.

He said that Mr Stone had put to the Court the concern that the discovery in New

Zealand of this relatively simple means of manufacture added a new dimension to the manufacture of drugs in New Zealand. Perhaps it would be one difficult to discover by ordinary police methods.

“He asks, therefore, for a deterrent punishment to show others that they will be treated severely for ths kind of offence,” said his Honour.

“While it is proper to include in any punishment some feature of deterrence for others as well as you yourself, care must be taken to ensure that the punishment that is meted out to you is for your offence, and not because people are in other places in New Zealand manufacturing morphine and, perhaps, for commercial purposes and on repeated occasions, after earlier punishment,” he said.