Teen was sold legal highs
AMAN who sold legal highs to a teenage girl has avoided jail.
Niall Robert Butson, 23, from Macclesfield, supplied the 15-year-old with what she believed to be LSD – a powerful hallucinogenic drug.
But the orange tablets decorated with the image of a banana were in fact legal highs he had bought on the internet.
Prosecutors told the court that after taking the drug, the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had collapsed unconscious and spent two days in hospital ‘in a life-threatening condition’ but they added that there was no proof of any link between the drug and the girl’s medical reaction.
Butson, of Black Road, admitted offering to supply a class A drug at Chester Crown Court.
Sentencing Butson to 16 months in prison, suspended for two years, Judge Woodward warned him that had the Crown proved the link he would have gone to jail for a ‘lengthy period’.
He said: “The facts are very unusual indeed. This is not an ordinary case of a class A drug supplier.
“She approached and pestered you and eventu- ally you agreed to supply her LSD. But you didn’t supply her LSD and knew it.
“The aftermath as to what happened to the girl can’t be directed against you. But I make it very clear if it had been I would have taken it extremely seriously and would have sent you to prison for a lengthy period of time.”
The court heard that Butson sold the girl four tablets for £25 in October 2014.
Mark Connor, defending, said: “His crime is saying it was LSD when it wasn’t. This is an a-typical case.
“It was the girl who set up this deal and the defendant passing drug to the girl.
“The girl didn’t want to prosecute. She took the drug of her own free will no one forced her.
“She didn’t want revenge but she did want him to face some consequence for what happened.
“It was possible that whatever she took could have caused her symptoms. That has played out in his mind and changed his own attitude to drugs and legal highs.
“He deeply regrets his previous life. There has been a positive change in his attitude. He has given up that lifestyle.”
Butson was also given 200 hours unpaid work.
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