A Hong Kong obstetrician who kept more than 20 grams (0.7 ounces) of crystal meth in a hotel room he shared with his boyfriend has been sentenced to 10 months in jail for five drug offences.
Counsel for Eric Chan Ho-lam, 32, on Friday asked Magistrate Kestrel Lam Tsz-hong at Kowloon City Court to impose a non-custodial sentence, saying his client held a respectable job and contributed to society by practising medicine.
The lawyer said Chan had been using drugs to cope with the “unbearable workload” since the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020, and he had a good character as well as a solid family and educational background.
But Lam rejected the defence submission.
“[These] could only be mitigation factors. However, if the court gave mercy [to the defendant] based on these factors and handed down an inappropriate sentence that was not in line with the appellate courts [guideline], it would have deviated from the [legal] principle,” the magistrate said.
The court heard Chan was unfit to serve his sentence in a drug addiction treatment centre because he was not an addict, even though he told police that he had been using drugs for the past three to four years.
