P-dealing gets gang boss eight years

Paul Christopher Laxon used to live in Napier. Photo / Facebook

A P-dealing gang boss caught bringing drugs from the Bay of Plenty into Christchurch has been jailed for more than eight years.

Paul Christopher Laxon, formerly of Napier, is now the South Island president of Mongrel Mob Notorious.

He was "ringleader" of the highly organised trafficking and distribution network involving hundreds of thousands of dollars of methamphetamine.

Laxon, 60, had travelled from Christchurch to Rotorua seven times last year to find and buy the drugs and take shipments back down south.

The drugs were then broken down into "dealable amounts", ranging from one gram with a street value of $1000, down to $100 tenths of grams.

Laxon then got a Mongrel Mob associate, two of his own children and a childhood friend to sell the drugs in Christchurch and Dunedin.

On his seventh trip, armed police stopped his car near Rotorua on June 12 last year.

Police found 96g of P, with an estimated street value of $96,000, hidden in a plastic container beneath the car's carpet.

Laxon pleaded guilty to 18 charges of supplying the class A drug methamphetamine, and one charge of possession.

At the Christchurch District Court yesterday, Judge Raoul Neave sentenced him to eight years and two months in jail for what was "undoubtedly serious offending".

In the High Court at Napier in 2001, Laxon was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years' imprisonment on seven charges, including conspiracy to make and supply methamphetamine, conspiracy to manufacture cannabis oil, conspiracy to supply morphine sulphate and cannabis.

At the time he was described as the ringleader of a large commercial drug-dealing operation.

Laxon moved to Christchurch from the North Island about 10 years ago to escape "various drug influences", defence counsel Steve Hembrow said yesterday.

He had been working full-time, Mr Hembrow said, when his partner left in March last year "without warning".

Within a week, he was "back using" P, the court heard.

Laxon's intravenous drug use had rapidly escalated to 5g-6g a day.

To fund his expensive illicit habit, he "got himself into this web of offending", Mr Hembrow said.

The drug-running was not a gang operation, Mr Hembrow claimed, even though Laxon was the president of the Notorious chapter, which he said was not "really active".

Laxon's greatest regret was involving others, including his two children, Mr Hembrow said.

He described Laxon as "well-spoken ... quite charming in many respects" and said he was now a model prisoner, who had vowed his days of criminal behaviour were now over.

Crown prosecutor Mark Zarifeh said Laxon was "clearly the ringleader and organiser of this enterprise".

Laxon's daughter Melissa Melanie-Jane Laxon, 38, his son Thomas Paul Christopher Neil, 23, Maynard Wickliffe, 37, and Karen Marie Scott, 44, were also arrested as part of the operation and admitted supplying methamphetamine.

Scott was jailed for three years and two months, while Melissa Laxon was sentenced to 12 months' home detention.

Yesterday, Wickliffe was jailed for two years, seven months.

Neil, whom defence counsel Elizabeth Bulger said was not a drug user but had been financially motivated to get involved, was sentenced to 12 months' home detention.