MAGISTRATES have heard first hand accounts from three different solicitors of GHB’s return to Oswestry, describing how the town is once again ‘awash’ with the drug.
“GHB was obliterated from Oswestry, but has now returned to the area and people have again begun supplying it,” solicitor Ceri Lewis told Shrewsbury magistrates last week, when representing a 27-year-old from Oswestry charged with affray and possession of the drug, the unique use of which had grown in Oswestry to alarming levels until a major operation by police and partners in April last year.
Her comments echoed those of the Crown Prosecution Service, whose prosecutor, Kate Price, described the police interview in which the young man told police how he had successfully broken his addiction to the drug and remained clean for around six months, only to find himself before the court on charges of possession and affray, Mrs Price telling magistrates: “it has recently resurfaced in Oswestry and he had taken just a few capfuls.”
While this case was being heard, across the corridors at Shrewsbury’s second courtroom, another bench of magistrates were hearing how a drink, believed to have been spiked with the drug, caused a 20-year-old Oswestry man of previous good character to assault police when they called at his home to investigate a disturbance, waking in a cell the next morning with no recollection of how he came to be there.
“All of us in the legal profession are aware that Oswestry is again awash with a drug called GHB,” solicitor Martin Rogerson told magistrates, “From the kind of behaviour and lack of recollection it sounds very much like he imbibed some GHB though he says he has never taken any.
“It is highly unusual for someone to reach the age of 20 without ever being in trouble, then in their own home to begin assaulting police officers,” he added.
One of the men from Oswestry to appear before magistrates last Thursday, charged with possession of GHB was said to have been addicted to the drug for a lengthy period until he was sent to prison last year, where he was able to get himself clean of it.
Ceri Lewis defending, said the man had emerged from prison, only to find the
drug had re-established itself within the town and that people were once again supplying it.