Deferred sentence gives peer last chance to beat drug problem

habit and avoid prison.

As he left the court, Lord Bristol said: ''Phew, I'm not going inside.

Thank God for that.''

Lord Bristol, 38, described as a sad and emotionally deprived figure

with an addiction stretching back 20 years, was told his sentence for

possessing cocaine and heroin was being deferred for five months.

Lord Bristol, said to have daily consumed ''enormous quantities'' of

hard drugs, must then return to Snaresbrook Crown Court and show he has

not ''thrown the towel in'' during treatment at the Charter clinic in

Chelsea.

Judge Owen Stable, QC, warned him that if he gave up the fight against

his addiction he would be jailed immediately for 10 months.

''I shall not be looking for miracles, but to see that you have done

your level best to stick to the advice your doctors have given, and to

follow their regime -- to make real progress to rid yourself of this

habit that has done so much damage.

''You have a clear choice and are getting a chance to show what you

can make of it,'' he said.

The court heard that Lord Bristol became a registered drug addict just

days before his ancestral home at Ickworth House, Horringer, near Bury

St Edmunds, Suffolk, was raided by police in October 1991.

Fifteen officers and a sniffer dog spent two hours searching the east

wing, where he lived.

They found a false bottom canister of furniture polish and two glass

salt and pepper pot containers that he used to store hard drugs and feed

his two-hourly habit by inhaling drugs through rolled-up bank notes.

They discovered more cocaine in a gold Russian snuff box, and

drug-taking items which analysis showed bore traces of banned

substances, the court heard.

The Judge said he ''strongly suspected'' the peer's awareness of an

imminent police raid was the reason why such small quantities of class A

drugs were found at his home.

The drugs represented little more than two days' intake for Lord

Bristol, according to what he told a doctor, said the Judge.

''I don't for a moment believe that drugs were supplied to Ickworth

for you in such minute amounts,'' he added.

Lord Bristol admitted two possession charges, but earlier yesterday

was cleared of three charges of supplying hard drugs to friends over

dinner and at a game shoot, when the Judge called a halt to the five-day

trial.

After listening to submissions by defence barrister George Carman, QC,

he said he had decided some of the prosecution evidence was

unsatisfactory.

He also criticised businessman Bruce Smith, one of the peer's former

business partners and the Crown's main witness, for ''sickening

hypocrisy''.

Mr Smith told the jury he threatened Lord Bristol with the ''drug

card'', warning he would tell police about his drug activities if the

marquis went ahead with a #134,000 High Court action against him, the

Judge said.

Although Lord Bristol was ''obviously vulnerable'' to threats, he

continued with the litigation, and Mr Smith informed on his former

friend.

The Judge said Mr Smith had said it was his ''public duty'' to go to

the police, something he regarded as ''sickening hypocrisy'' from a man

who knew of the peer's drug addiction for several years but did nothing.

Lord Bristol had previous convictions for smuggling cocaine and

possessing hard drugs.

Dr Gerald Woolfson, an expert on addiction and medical director of the

clinic where Lord Bristol has been receiving treatment as an in-patient

for the past 10 weeks, said he first came to him for help voluntarily.

He was daily taking two to three grammes of cocaine and a similar

amount of heroin derivative -- an ''enormous'' intake, he said.

After a few weeks' in-patient treatment, the peer was allowed -- with

''considerable reluctance'' on the doctor's part -- to be discharged to

deal with pressing financial problems.

He had a ''sequential'' addiction, dosing himself alternatively on the

two drugs. Considering their effects, it was ''quite miraculous'' the

aristocrat sought treatment in the first place.

''In a sense he was in the grip of what one could describe as a

Svengali-type situation, where the effect of heroin derivatives followed

by cocaine and then by heroin derivative . . . took control of him and

he was not really the master of his own personal destiny on a day-to-day

basis,'' said Dr Woolfson.

''He has considerable personality problems, he is considerably

insecure, and his threshold for stress is low,'' said the doctor.

He said the aristocrat had an ''even chance'' under his current

treatment of being weaned off drugs, but warned that if he reverted to

his previous addiction he might end up ''taking his own life''.

Professor James Griffiths Edwards, an international authority on

addiction, said the peer had no more than a ''glimmer of hope'' of

conquering his habit for good.

Mr Carman urged the Judge to show Lord Bristol mercy.

The divorce of his parents when he was very young, with his father

remarrying more than once, had left the peer with an ''emotionally

deprived'' childhood.

''It turned him, with money, to alcoholism and drugs in late

adolescence and he never has really overcome it,'' he said.

''There is not in this country one law for the rich and another for

the poor. If anything we expect, do we not, higher standards from those

who have the advantages of wealth and education, and Lord Bristol is

aware of these matters.''