A Victorian man has narrowly avoided jail after police sniffer dogs caught him trying to smuggle a commercial quantity of drugs into Matong’s Burning Seed festival.
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Christopher Lorenc, 26, fronted Wagga District Court for sentencing on Monday after he was caught with more than 32 grams of magic mushrooms and six grams of cannabis at last year’s festival.
Police pulled Lorenc over for a random breath test as part of their ‘Operation Burning Seed’ when they found the drugs concealed in his backpack.
Lorenc then told police “I know they are illegal, but I don’t really agree with that”.
“I picked them myself and then dried them out – I’ve done this a number of times, so I know what mushrooms to pick,” he said.
Lorenc was then charged with supplying a prohibited drug after he admitted he had planned to brew the mushrooms into a tea for about 10 of his friends.
In court, Judge Jennifer English said Lorenc was an “arrogant” young man who had clearly not learned his lesson after the incident.
“Despite being charged and convicted, he informed the Department of Justice he has no intention of ceasing his use of cannabis,” Judge English said.
“This of course was not a one-off aberration – it was a planned, organised, thought through crime and something that he had done before.”
The court heard Lorenc came across the mushrooms in his work as a conservationist and picked them knowing what they were.
Judge English said a message had to be sent to the community amid a scourge of drug-related deaths at festivals.
“All too often, things go wrong at music festivals – just recently here in NSW, two people died at the Defqon music festival from the use of drugs,” she said.
“The offender stated he intended to supply 10 of his friends with this tea – that is putting the health of 10 other people at significant risk."
Lorenc will return to court in six weeks when his intensive correction order will be finalised.
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