Man jailed for cooking up ‘explosive’ drug

A MAN who risked blowing up his flat while cooking a highly-volatile drug has been jailed for almost three years.

Norman Thornton, 38, was making ‘shatter’, a super-strength form of cannabis, when he left an oven unattended.

He was arrested outside his flat for something unrelated, and when officers searched his house the next day they found the drugs cooking in the empty house.

A book about growing cannabis plants was found, as well as a mask worn while making the drug.

The father-of-one admitted two charges of producing the drug including culpably and recklessly making it at his home in Haghill, Glasgow, on September 5 last year in an unventilated room capable of ‘sudden ignition’ to the danger of him and his neighbours.

Jailing Thornton yesterday for 34 months, sheriff John McCormick said: ‘The potential for catastrophic consequences to you, your neighbours and members of the public cannot be underestimated in this case.’

The court heard Thornton was picked up by police on September 4, in connection with an unrelated matter. Officers got a search warrant and around 10am the following day went to Thornton’s house.

Procurator fiscal depute Niall Macdonald said: ‘Immediately the officers got a very strong smell of cannabis. They quite quickly saw a cupboard in the bedroom with a laboratory style oven.

‘The oven was switched on and the item inside was a brown substance.’

The court heard this is known as butane honey oil, with the street name ‘shatter’. The value of the drug was around £1,400.

Mr Macdonald added that officers knew of the drug and immediately left the flat and called the fire service. He said: ‘They instructed the police to arrange for evacuation of other people both in the block and in properties nearby.

‘The road outside was cordoned off. It’s known that this procedure of taking herbal cannabis then extracting this particular substance from it is has led to incidents of explosions.’

The property was later deemed safe. Mr Macdonald referred to an incident on March 21 last year when a ‘similar production’ blew out the windows and doors of a property and injured several people.

The prosecutor mentioned it to show the ‘real risk involved’ in making such a drug.

Scott Peden, 30, was sentenced to sixand-a-half years last August at the High Court after his home-made lab exploded, injuring people and causing £1million of damage to a tenement building in a similar crime.