Lotto-ticket dots allegedly offered to police as ‘trips’

Press, 23 November 1988, Page 14

Lotto-ticket dots allegedly offered to police as ‘trips’

A use for Lotto tickets in the illicit drug scene was revealed in the District Court yesterday. The method allegedly in use is for orange dots to be pressed from Lotto cards and placed in cellophone or other paper, to simulate “dots” of lysergide, which are then sold to unsuspecting purchasers. The method came to light during evidence at a preliminary hearing in which a man faced two counts of offering to supply a class A controlled drug, lysergide, to an undercover policeman and an undercover policewoman on March 30. The “lysergide,” which the two constables purchased in three paper squares, was found, on scientific analysis, not to be a drug, according to evidence.

After hearing evidence of prosecution witnesses,

Mr C. W. Crawford and Mrs C. M. Holmes, Justices of the Peace, held there was sufficient evidence to commit the defendant, Anthony Mark Charles, aged 25, unemployed, for trial. They remanded him pending a date for his trial by jury in the High Court. Counsel, Mr R. D. Palmer, reserved his defence. Sergeant J. E. Dwyer prosecuted. Prosecution evidence was that a policeman and policewoman on undercover duties in Christchurch at the time were in the cafe bar of the United Service Hotel. The undercover policeman said Charles was overheard speaking to another man, and mentioning “trips,” which he understood to mean lysergide.

He then asked Charles what he wanted for them,

and Charles said $2O each. He said he would take a couple. Charles said he would give him two for $3O. The constable asked his companion for $2O. He provided the other $lO. Charles gave him two small paper squares from cigarette packet tinfoil, with orange dots in the middle of each. Cross-examined, the constable agreed that in the conversation he overhead, only “trips” were mentioned. The words “lysergide” or “acid” were not used.

He agreed that neither constable had been brought into the conversation, or offered drugs, until he asked Charles how much he wanted for the trips. The undercover policewoman said Charles sold two trips to her companion then one to another

man. He then looked in the cigarette packet tinfoil and said he had only one left and would sell this for $lO to whoever wanted it. She purchased this from him. Cross-examined, she said neither constable had been brought into the conversation.

The first time any transaction was mentioned was when her companion approached Charles. Evidence of a D.S.I.R. scientist was that the white paper squares, with spots in the middle, were analysed. No lysergide was detected. A detective gave evidence of interviewing Charles, who said he had not had contact with lysergide in the last few months.

He had not dealt in the drug. He remembered having

“been around” guys who had sold trips which they cut from Lotto tickets and put in cellophane, and then sold as lysergide. He said he did not make any deals. He had sometimes brought together people who were wanting tabs of lysergide, and those with the tabs, but did not sell any.

He said he knew it was not lysergide that was being sold. Asked by the detective if the purchasers minded being ripped off, Charles said nobody liked being ripped off. Told about the drug offence he had allegedly committed Charles asked how could be be charged with that when the drug was not offered. He was told that he was still alleged to have offered the cards as being lysergide when he sold them.