A 30-year-old visiting drug dealer has been sentenced to over three years in jail after being caught with 172 grams of ketamine in the Mannin Hotel.

Deemster Graeme Cook said that he would be giving Thomas Anthony Fitzsimmons a deterrent sentence in the hopes of reversing the recent uptick in ketamine dealing on the island.

On March 5 police were called to the four-star Douglas hotel after reports that Mr Fitzsimmons, of Woodsorrel Road in Liverpool, had been damaging a double-glazed PVC entrance door by leaning on it.

He told staff he had ‘taken a lot of coke and ket’ and appeared under the influence of drugs.

When police arrived, his booking was revoked due to the damage and his room searched.

In addition to the wrap containing the 172.3g of ketamine, valued at an upper limit of around £8,617, a bag with 0.5 gram of cannabis was also found.

Prosecuting advocate James Robinson outlined how there had been ‘exponential increases in ketamine [supply] on the Isle of Man’, to the point there was now ‘an emerging market’ in the drug.

He also explained how there was a new trend of people mixing ketamine with cocaine, known as ‘Calvin Klein’.

addicted

Mr Fitzsimmons claimed that he was addicted to ketamine and took two grams of it a day, which on hearing police evidence Deemster Cook described as ‘nonsense’ and said that taking this amount routinely ‘would kill you’.

‘In my public duty I need to impose a deterrent sentence, in light of the fact that ketamine seems to be an emerging drug on the island,’ said Deemster Cook.

‘It is also a risk factor that people are now injecting ketamine to get a better high’.

He continued: ‘The most worrying effect [of ketamine] is what’s known as a “k-hole” [an overdose] which leaves the individual effectively paralyzed, leaving them vulnerable to all kinds of unlawful activity’.

Mr Robinson pointed out that an aggravating factor was Mr Fitzsimmon’s previous drug offenses, including one from Leeds Crown Court in 2015 for possession of MDMA with intent to supply.

Mr Fitzsimmons was also sentenced to one month for the possession of cannabis and one month for damage of the hotel door, to run concurrently with the main sentence (possession with intent to supply class B drug ketamine).