COURT: Defendant, please stand. The defendant has pleaded guilty to one count of trafficking in a dangerous drug, namely 94.2 grammes of a crystalline solid containing 91 grammes of metamphetamine hydrochloride.
The facts are that the defendant left Hong Kong in the early hours of the morning of 30 December last year via Lok Ma Chau from mainland China and returned to Hong Kong at 3.50 pm the same day. When he was searched upon his arrival in Hong Kong at the Lok Ma Chau Control Point, the drugs were found hidden inside the accused’s underpants. The defendant was arrested and upon caution admitted that he was bringing the drugs into Hong Kong to deliver to somebody and that he was to receive $1,000 as expenses. The estimated retail value of the drugs in Hong Kong at that time was $67,258.80.
The defendant is aged 48 and has 10 previous convictions, six of which are drug related. They were all for possession of dangerous drugs and, as Mr Lo pointed out, this is his first drug trafficking offence. It is not unusual, because most people graduate from the slippery slope of drug taking to drug trafficking.
Mr Lo, in mitigation, explained the background of the defendant and he had relapsed into taking drugs in 2008 due to burn injuries which he had suffered in an LP gas explosion in mainland China. As I said, it is only background. It is not an excuse. The only mitigation I see in this case is that the defendant is remorseful and has pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity.
As Mr Lo also correctly pointed out, guidelines have been laid down for trafficking in “Ice” or methamphetamine hydrochloride in the case of AG v Ching Kwok Hung in 1991. In that case, the Court of Appeal recommended that for trafficking in between 70 to 300 grammes of “Ice”, the recommended guideline would be a sentence of imprisonment of 10 to 14 years.
For this amount of drugs in the present case, which is 91 grammes, the starting point sentence would be about 10 to 10 and a half years. In the defendant’s case I would adopt a starting point of 10 years, but because of the aggravating feature of carrying the drugs into Hong Kong from mainland China I would add one year, making a starting point of 11 years.
Giving the defendant the defendant the full one-third discount, the sentence is therefore reduced to one of 7 and 4 months.