Legal high user tells of detox in custody
A teenager using synthetic cannabis and living on the street has gone through a three-month detox – his time in custody on remand.
Seventeen-year-old Nico Ropiha mentioned the benefit of the compulsory “detox” to his defence counsel Moana Cole before his sentencing in the Christchurch District Court yesterday.
The synthetic cannabis has affected his life since just before he turned 17. He has ended up leaving his family, sleeping in abandoned buildings, stealing food to eat, and doing nothing as the court sentences piled up against him.
It all caught up with him a few months ago, and led to Judge Jane Farish yesterday imposing a nine-month jail term which will be followed by six months of prison release conditions under strict conditions.
During that time, his probation officer will have to approve where he lives, so he can’t return to the streets, and he will have to do a Youth Offender Programme rehabilitation course, and undertake treatment and counselling for work and living skills.
“If you can get job skills and get a job, you won’t end up stealing and living on the street,” said the judge.
Judge Farish said she believed his involvement with synthetic cannabis would have started in 2013 when he left home before he turned 17.
Miss Cole said he had been put into care but had left because of the stand-over tactics he encountered there, and began living on the streets. “He engaged in drinking and synthetic cannabis and his associates led him down a very unfortunate path,” she said.
After his three months in custody on remand he was now motivated to do the rehabilitation.
Judge Farish told him that when he became old enough for the adult court last year, judges had given him sentences that were designed to keep him out of jail, but he had not done anything.
He had breached sentences of supervision and intensive supervision, and probation said he had only done 2.5 hours of a 90-hour sentence of community work.
He had been caught twice living in abandoned buildings, and he and an associate had burgled a boarded-up and damaged dairy to try to get food.
He had also been caught tagging – an intentional damage charge. Judge Farish said she imagined his shoplifting had been to obtain money for synthetic cannabis, because he had not been able to get a welfare benefit.
She was not surprised that he had not done his sentences. “When you were living on the street the most important thing is where you were going to sleep, what you are going to eat – particularly when you have no income – and where you are going to get synthetic cannabis.”
Category: News
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