By Staff Reporter

Last updated 10:17, Saturday, 13 September 2008

A man caught with nearly 4,000 tablets of the date rape drug Rohypnol has been sent to prison for three years.

The case involving 30-year-old lorry driver Robert McNichol is thought to be the first involving the controversial incapacitating drug to come before the courts in Cumbria.

McNichol, the father of a young daughter, pleaded guilty at Carlisle Crown Court to possessing the tablets with an intent to supply.

He also admitted that the £4,970 cash police found at his home in Park Road, Aspatria, had come from his criminal conduct.

A Proceeds of Crime Act hearing will be held later to order him to pay back some or all of the profits he made from his crimes.

Prosecuting counsel Tim Evans told the court police had found a stash of tablets buried at the foot of a telegraph pole in a wood near a paintball centre at Blennerhasset after they saw McNichol behaving suspiciously there.

He said McNichol must have known what the tablets could be used for.

“Anyone who is supplying this drug into the market would be aware that there was a risk that one of the uses to which it might be put would be to facilitate date rape,” he said.

In mitigation defence barrister Simon Csoka said that just because Rohypnol could be used as a date rape drug it did not mean that is what McNichol had sold it as.

In fact, he said, McNichol had thought the tablets were nothing more harmful than diazepam and had been “horrified” when he discovered that they were not.

Judge Paul Batty QC dismissed that as “a cock and bull story” and said McNichol had to go to prison for a long time to deter others.

“I can’t overlook the fact that one of the uses of this drug is as an incapacitant so-called date rape drug.”