The facts which the defendant has admitted to shows that on the afternoon of 29 February 2020, he was seen on Chatham Road with several other persons and he had a pink plastic bag under his armpit. Upon seeing the police officers, he walked quickly away. And feeling suspicious, the police then went up and intercepted him. And inside the pink plastic bag that the defendant had with him were found the various drugs which is the subject matter of the charge.
Under caution, the defendant admitted that the drugs belonged to him and he had repackaged them, and he gave an account of what he did and he said that he had stayed in a hotel the night before.
The total value of the drugs is somewhere over some $250,000. I had not been given the exact figure as that had not been worked out by the prosecution.
And fluorodeschloroketamine is a new psychoactive substance and it is structurally analogous to that of ketamine, and they share similar toxicological properties and similar psychotropic effects.
Now, the defendant himself. There is not much in his background that calls for strong mitigation. He has had since 2010 drug convictions, and his last conviction in 2013 was for trafficking in dangerous drugs and he was sentenced to 6 years and 4 months. He was last discharged from Hei Ling Chau on 22 November 2017.
Ms Cheung on his behalf has said everything she could possibly say on his behalf, that he is aged 30 and he comes from a poor background and had been out of work since October 2019 and that he is a drug addict, and due to financial difficulties, in order to feed his drug addiction and to pay for his father’s medical bill, he then succumbed to temptation to carry the drugs for a reward.
And Ms Cheung says the defendant is remorseful and that part of the drugs were for his own self-consumption, as evidenced by the urine test that was administered to him after his arrest which showed that he had amphetamine and cocaine in his urine.
So because of the multiplicity of the drugs, both counsel have very helpfully worked out the conversion test and also the ratio test. I am more inclined to accept the conversion test in this case. It is clear that the cocaine follows the guidelines laid down in Lau Tak Ming for heroin, that ketamine also shares the same sentencing guidelines as MDMA or 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine in the case of Hii Siew Cheng, and nimetazepam is, according to Wong Kin Kau in 2010, to be viewed as similar to ketamine.
And the drug para-methoxymethamphetamine was dealt with by the case handed up to me by Mr Chan, HCCC 222/2014, where Madam Justice Poon, as she then was in 2015, accepted that the drug would be similar, would bear similar guidelines to -- that it is related to ‘Ecstasy’ and that its potency is four times that of ‘Ecstasy’. And Madam Justice Poon, as she then was, then applied what Mr Justice Patrick Li, as he then was, the sentencing guidelines in Hii Siew Cheng which is said to be relevant to this drug, PMMA.
So without a doubt, I consider that the conversion test is the most fair in the circumstances.
Now, according to the prosecution’s conversion test which was converting the ketamine and MDMA to cocaine gives a sentencing of about 10 years and 9 months. And then according to Ms Cheung, she has no quarrel with that because her own conversion test that she had worked out was 10 years 10 months. So it is only a month difference. So to be fair, therefore I will adopt the 10 years 9 months as worked out by Mr Chan.
I am of course also, as I have mentioned, I have to take into account the fact that the defendant was addicted to drugs because his urine test showed the presence of the amphetamine and cocaine. So I will therefore reduce the sentence of 10 years 9 months to 10 years.
And then because the defendant had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity, then I will reduce it by one-third. Therefore, the defendant will go to prison for 6 years and 8 months.
Please sit down. I was tempted to consider the multiplicity of the drugs as an aggravating factor, but I have decided against it in this case and also the fact that the defendant has been in gaol for trafficking for a similar offence not too long ago. I have considered both but, however, taking into account everything that has been said, I do not increase the starting-point sentence.