A pair of British pharmacists who sold “industrial quantities” of Class C controlled drugs were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, suspended for 24 months, after an investigation by the Criminal Enforcement Unit of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA).
Both had pleaded guilty. Mandip Sidhu was sentenced to two years on each of five counts of supplying Class C drugs, and four months for forgery, all to run concurrently and suspended for 24 months on condition she completes 200 hours of community service for her role in the illegal supply of diazepam, zolpidem and zopiclone.
Nabeil Nasr was handed two years for each of two counts of supplying Class C drugs diazepam and zopiclone, and one year for each of two counts of wholesale dealing without a licence, suspended for 24 months, also on condition he completes 200 hours’ community service.
The offences, described in court as being on an “industrial scale”, took place between May 2013 and June 2017.
Between them, Sidhu and Nasr unlawfully supplied more than 55m doses of Class C controlled drugs: 47m of them were of diazepam.
Both were pharmacists registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council at the time of offending: Sidhu, the director of Pharmaceutical Health Limited (PHL), and Nasr owned several pharmacies across the North West of England.
Sidhu also pleaded guilty to a charge of forgery, in which she made a false invoice in an attempt to mislead an inspector from the MHRA into believing medicines had been sold to a company outside the European Economic Area.
The court heard that PHL, the company of which Sidhu was a director, purchased 4.27m tablets in August 2014, and 4.5m tablets in March 2015, even though PHL had not legally dispensed any medicines against a prescription since 19 July 2013.
For perspective, around 5m diazepam tablets were legally dispensed against prescription in the whole of England during 2014.
These figures were dwarfed by the quantities of drugs passing through the hands of Sidhu and Nasr, said authorities.
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