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UK: Newspaper 'sting' traps drug expert dealing in cannabis Michael Howie Edinburgh Evening News Thursday 11 Sep 2003 A DRUGS expert who has given evidence to MPs and High Court judges has been sentenced to community service for illegally supplying cannabis. Edinburgh businessman Neil Montgomery, who has campaigned for the legalisation of cannabis, was caught in a newspaper "sting" operation in Edinburgh last year. Montgomery, 43, of Dunbar's Close, Edinburgh, pleaded guilty at the city's Sheriff Court last month to supplying cannabis resin and cannabis to the undercover reporters in the Capital's Balmoral Hotel. Sentence was deferred until yesterday for background reports. Fiscal Isobel Clark told the court yesterday that the reporters set up a meeting on February 21 with Montgomery in the Balmoral. Montgomery, who acted as a consultant with GW Pharmaceuticals, a drug research company, was told the men wanted him to act as a consultant for a project to be run under licence from the Pakistani government to manufacture medicinal products containing cannabis. During an hour-long discussion, Montgomery was asked if he could supply cannabis. He told the reporters he knew someone who "did little bits here and there" and who could give him cannabis which was "really quite nice" and "at right good prices". He left an envelope containing cannabis resin at the hotel later that evening. The following day he went to the hotel again and was asked for more of the drug. A person with him was given £20 for the drugs delivered the previous evening and another £20 for the drugs to be delivered later that day. Montgomery later returned to the hotel with a Jiffy bag containing cannabis. Defence agent Mark Chambers said his client had been the victim of "an elaborate hoax" carried out by reporters from the News of the World. The reporter, he said, had represented himself as the member of a family-run pharmaceutical company in Pakistan. Montgomery was offered a position as a consultant with that company for a research project with a budget of £500,000 and he would receive a fee of £27,000. Mr Chambers said the amount of cannabis supplied was small and worth only about £60. The impact of the court case had been significant on Montgomery on both a personal and business level, said Mr Chambers. He had lost his position as a consultant with CW Pharmaceuticals. His client, he added, was "more guilty of rashness and foolishness" than anything else. Sheriff Douglas Allan said, in considering sentence, he had read various newspaper articles about Montgomery, letters of reference, and a letter from Montgomery. He told Montgomery: "Clearly you have a great deal of knowledge of the subject. "That puts you in a difficult area because this is a subject which, at the moment, has a degree of illegality which you don't agree with and have made efforts to try and ensure the law is changed." Sentencing him to 150 hours' community service, Sheriff Allan said he accepted Montgomery had been "set up by a fairly elaborate pretence", but that he had moved from legality to illegality by complying to the request to supply cannabis. He said that in his letter, Montgomery had said he had felt "troubled" about the request, but felt it would have been "churlish" to refuse.
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