KEY POINTS:
A couple have been told they and their children can look forward to a life of misery - if they cannot kick their methamphetamine addictions.
In the High Court at Christchurch today, Justice Lester Chisholm told Kenneth Allan Burton, 35: "With the history you have now got, you are going to have to get on top of that drug problem and use all the assistance you can get, otherwise not only you, but your children and your wife, can look forward to a life of misery."
He told Katrina Anne Burton, 33: "People like you need to realise that involvement with methamphetamine is going to attract stern sentences.
"It is well known now that it is a dreadful drug that destroys people and if you don't get on top of it, it will destroy you as well."
Kenneth Burton was jailed for three years four months after pleading guilty to charges of manufacturing methamphetamine, possession of equipment for its manufacture, and unlawful possession of three rifles.
Katrina Burton got 12 months home detention, after serving nearly four months in custody on remand since her arrest.
She will have to undergo drug and alcohol assessment and treatment, relationship counselling, abstain from drugs and alcohol, and do any other programmes as required.
She had pleaded guilty to one charge of possession of equipment for manufacturing methamphetamine at a Waimate - South Canterbury - house.
Justice Chisholm cited the presence of the couple's children at the houses in Waimate and Aorangi Road, Christchurch, where methamphetamine was manufactured, as being an aggravating factor.
"The risk of explosion is enormous in these sort of situations," he said.
Police raided the Waimate house on October 25 last year. After calling on the occupants to come out, they noticed smoke puffing from the chimney, and other activity. It was 13 minutes before the parents and three children came out.
Since then, Katrina Burton has given birth to another child, now 17 weeks old.
They have lost custody of their children to Child, Youth, and Family, but with Katrina Burton now granted home detention at a relative's house, she may be able to get them back. She said she had overcome her addiction.
They were granted bail after their South Canterbury arrest and only a month later Kenneth Burton had re-established a methamphetamine laboratory which was found in a car at the back of the Christchurch address.
His defence counsel Tim Fournier said it had not been a commercial operation. Kenneth Burton had tried to make the drug to supply him and his wife, who were both addicts. It had always been made in a separate room away from the children, or in an outbuilding, or while the children were not at home.
Counsel for Katrina Burton, Gerard Lynch, said she was now clean of drugs, committed to rehabilitation, and ready to recommit herself to her children.
Crown prosecutor Zannah Johnston said the aggravating features were Kenneth Burton's continued offending on bail, the fact that the clandestine laboratories were at homes where children were living, and his previous convictions.
- NZPA
