The Crown wants a Surrey man busted with fentanyl-laced heroin and other drugs during a traffic stop on the Coquihalla Highway last year to spend four years in federal prison.
But Clayton Johnson’s defence lawyer is arguing the gravity of the fentanyl crisis was not public knowledge at the time of his arrest. Johnson pleaded guilty in B.C. Supreme Court on Thursday to two counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking.
The 40-year-old was pulled over south of Merritt on Jan. 19, 2016, after a passing police officer noticed him behaving suspiciously.
“He looked like he became rigid and he pushed himself back and tried to hide from the officer,” federal Crown prosecutor Anthony Varesi said.
The Mountie ran Johnson’s licence plate and learned he was prohibited from driving. After he was pulled over, Johnson told the officer he was transporting drugs and he was arrested.
A police search turned up nearly four ounces of crystal meth, two ounces of cocaine and nearly two ounces of heroin containing fentanyl.
Varesi said Johnson admitted he was running the drugs for someone else,” Varesi said.
Court heard police also found the hallucinogens DMT and GHB, the so-called date-rape drug, in Johnson’s SUV.
Varesi said Canada’s courts have set a bar for fentanyl traffickers because of the known dangers of the opioid.
“There’s now a national health crisis due to the proliferation of fentanyl and there have been a staggering number of overdose deaths,” he said. “It’s amongst the deadliest of all controlled substances. At the time of this offence, the prevalence of deaths by fentanyl was public knowledge.”
Defence lawyer Jeremy Jensen disagreed, saying the fentanyl crisis was not common knowledge in January 2016.
Even if it was, he said, Johnson might not have known the heroin was laced.
“He arguably doesn’t have a clue about what he’s muling,” Jensen said.
“You have a charge of trafficking fentanyl and fentanyl isn’t even an isolated drug here. It’s a small portion of another drug used to make it more potent.
“This is not a case where a person has X grams of fentanyl and they’re well aware of what it is and they’re selling it as fentanyl.”
Jensen said Johnson was “being used as a pawn” by high-level drug dealers. He suggested a sentence of 12 months in prison followed by two years on probation.
Johnson has a lengthy criminal record, including 22 convictions. Court heard he is a drug addict who has been in recovery since the offence.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Hope Hyslop is expected to make a decision next week. Johnson remains free on bail.
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