Drug veteran gets six years

Brian Matthew Latta, whose name has gone down in the annals of home bake morphine manufacturing, has been sentenced to six years' jail for offences including making methamphetamine.

In 1984 Latta was jailed for manufacturing morphine in a case which set the benchmark for sentencing of that type of offence.

In the High Court at Auckland on Friday, Latta, 56, of Waimauku, was jailed for manufacturing methamphetamine and heroin, and cultivating and possessing cannabis for sale, as well as for having a pistol and a false passport.

He admitted the charges.

His lawyer, Peter Winter, described Latta as an "old school" offender, not involved in violence.

The gun was for protection from "outside pressures" and was not intended for use against the police or public.

Justice Peter Salmon said it was accepted that Latta became addicted to morphine after an operation at the age of 20 and had been addicted to various other drugs since.

Latta told the judge he had been "enslaved by opiates for 36 years", and did not deliberately get hooked on them.

The judge said the health authorities provided treatment, but Latta said methadone had never satisfied his craving for opiates and he had never been able to break the addiction.

Justice Salmon told him it was one thing to destroy himself, but quite another to destroy other people by making methamphetamine.

The chemicals found could have produced $42,000 to $74,000 of methamphetamine and the growing cannabis had a potential value of more than $100,000.