Home detention for suburban drug-making

By David Clarkson

A 54-year-old drug addict has been sentenced to eight months home detention for his homebake morphine operation at at house in Burnside.

Christopher Robin Horgan, unemployed, had pleaded guilty to charges of manufacturing the class B drug, and possession of equipment and chemicals for making the drug.

Christchurch District Court Judge Raoul Neave said Horgan had a long-standing drug addiction which had led to 12 convictions ? including three for manufacturing morphine ? between 1984 and 1992.

Defence counsel Tom Stevens said Horgan had learned from his sentences in the 1980s and 1990s. He had gone onto the methadone programme and had stayed offence-free for 20 years.

The offending by making homebake morphine had arisen from the losses he had suffered in the last few years.

?This has resulted in him resorting to illicit substances to cope with the fact that family-wise he?s very much alone,? said Stevens.

Prosecutor Chris Newman said the Crown accepted there was no commercial element to the drug manufacture, and it was for his own drug habit.

Judge Neave said it was an amateur drug-making operation, and imposed the home detention sentence with a special condition for counselling.