‘Homebake’ attempt brings detention

Press, 1 June 1985, Page 4

‘Homebake’ attempt brings detention

A “ham-fisted" attempt to make morphine from painkilling tablets at a house in Milton Street, Spreydon, led to Stephen Frank Coward, aged 38, being sentenced to six months periodic detention by Mr Justice Roper in the High Court yesterday. Coward had been found guilty by a jury on a charge of attempting to manufacture a ' class B drug. In addition to periodic detention he was put on probation for a year. Evidence was given at the trial that Coward and Barry lan Cameron, aged 30, unemployed, had attempted to make “homebake” morphine from analgesics -purchased from chemists’ - shops by a young woman called as a Crown witness, Tania Jean Barclay, who was declared hostile. Cameron was also to be sentenced on a similarcharge and one of posses-

sion of a hypodermic syringe and 19 needles for drug abuse, but as his probation report had not been completed he was remanded on bail to June 10 for sentence. For Coward, Mr D. C. Fitzgibbon said that it had been a very “ham-fisted” attempt to produce the drug and had not been successful. Coward was working for the first time in more than six years and had reduced his methadone treatment for drug addiction by a considerable amount. Coward had taken treatment at the hospital at Hanmer Springs and was showing a completely changed outlook on life. He was making a strenuous attempt to rehabilitate himself. If he was jailed all the efforts he had made could be lost.

Mr B. M. Stanaway, for the Crown, said that the Court of Appeal had expressed concern about the.

increasing amount of “homebake” drugs which were being made in New Zealand. It was necessary for the courts to use their sentencing powers firmly in the hope of deterrence at an early stage of the growth of a new social evil, the Court of Appeal had said. It had to be made clear that imprisonment would be the normal penalty for “homebake” morphine or heroin, the Court had said, Mr Stanaway said. His Honour said that he agreed with counsel that this was a fairly “hamfisted" attempt. Coward had a long list of convictions, but most were for offences of a nuisance value. Coward had impressed him as making a real attempt to break his drug habit and by getting employment, said his Honour. A term of imprisonment might wreck everything he had achieved.