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The sentences for two men found guilty of importing 220kg of a date rape drug, worth up to $1 million, have been reduced by two years by the Court of Appeal.
Glen Adams and Kaelib Hansen were originally sentenced to 11 years after police caught them importing gammabutyrolactone (GBL) - the chemical used to make Fantasy - in three months to January 2006.
Customs officers alerted police the container would be coming into the country, and they intercepted it before handing it on to the men - having replaced a significant amount of the class-B drug with water.
Police monitored the men and retrieved the drum after they had buried it near a bush camp outside Whangarei. The GBL was the largest amount seized in NZ and could have produced about 250,000 doses of Fantasy.
In their judgment issued yesterday, Justices Lester Chisholm, Susan Glazebrook and Mark Cooper said the drug had a "potential street value of $1,000,000 or more", and its wholesale value was about $200,000.
They said Judge Roy Wade, who sentenced the pair in the Whangarei District Court, had based his decision on a previous case in which similar quantities of the drug been imported.
But that case also had additional charges of importing GBH and money laundering.
- NZPA
