Drug sentence upheld

A drug user who nearly died in an explosion while trying to make methamphetamine has staved off an attempt to have his sentence increased.

Dennis Noel Lomas, 39, faces a lifetime of pain and repeated surgery after receiving severe burns to 45 per cent of his body in the explosion at his Whangarei home on March 9, 2001.

In February this year, he pleaded guilty to trying to making methamphetamine (speed) and was sentenced to 18 months' supervision.

The Crown asked the Court of Appeal to increase the sentence but, in a decision given in Auckland, the court upheld what it said would ordinarily have been too light a sentence.

It said the consequences for Lomas and his family were so horrendous that they were a deterrent and form of denunciation far in excess of anything the court could impose.

"More than two years after the event, the respondent [Lomas] still faces operative treatment as a result of which he is likely to lose toes because of the consequences of his foolish and illegal action."

The only change to the sentence was that the Court of Appeal quashed a condition of Lomas' supervision that he give six lectures to secondary school students on drug addiction and its consequences.

Lomas had heated a unknown substance on a portable gas barbecue and the substance ignited. He was "virtually killed" in the explosion, a doctor has said.

The same doctor thought Lomas' hygiene needs could not have been met in prison.

- NZPA