The drug in question was ketamine. You carried 816 grammes of it across the border into Hong Kong. You frankly confessed what you had done and you pleaded guilty in the Magistrates' Court. The street value of the drug in question was some $130,000.
Other than probation in 1980 you are a man with a clear record. You are not yourself a drug addict. You suffer a distressing medical condition. You committed the crime in question with your eyes open, knowing what you were doing, because you were in financial need. You took the risk to take the reward for being a courier.
It will have been explained to you that the sentences of these cases are based on guidelines which are in turn based on the nature of the drug and the quantity of it. You fall into a bracket where the starting-point for sentence is between 12 to 14 years' imprisonment. We would have been given a graph, not guidelines with bands, if these things were entirely mathematical, but given the weight in question here you are somewhere in the middle of the bracket.
You earn a third discount for your plea of guilty and what we are obliged to do is give the same discount whether, like you, you plead guilty at the earliest stage or whether you wait until a jury is empanelled and plead guilty at the door of the court.
If I took a starting-point of 13 years and applied the discount the sentence would be 8 years and 8 months. I do not forget the case has the aggravation of bringing the drug across a border but when it comes to looking at the right sentence at the end of the day, bearing in mind the early plea of guilty and the fact that you had kept out of trouble for most of your life and you are 45 years of age, I shall round it down to 8½ years' imprisonment because that is what I judge to be the right sentence on all the facts.
I have taken account of the letter you wrote me - thank you for it - and I have given what is in it as much weight as I can, and the sentence is 8½ years.