A FORMER North Yorkshire chemist was blackmailed into giving prescription drugs illegally to addicts, a court heard.

Drug abuser Christopher Bossons so terrified pharmacist Michael Turner, 51, that he hid the truth from police, even when they told him they suspected he was being blackmailed, Andrew Kershaw, prosecuting, told York Crown Court.

Word got around that Turner could succumb to pressure, and neighbours saw strangers repeatedly banging on the shop door and shouting through its letterbox when the pharmacy was shut. They also saw Turner driving off with boxes from the shop by night.

Police later found 475 methadone tablets at his home and a stock check at the shop revealed more than 2,300 methadone tablets missing.

When former heroin addict Melanie Padgett realised Bossons was selling diazepam, she questioned Turner and he confessed in tears. She twice called in her boyfriend to deal with Bossons and the pressure on Turner eased. As a thank-you, Turner gave her diazepam, as she had become dependent on it following a personal tragedy.

Turner, who lived in a village near York and used to run the Posterngate Pharmacy in Portholme Road, Selby, pleaded guilty to two charges of supplying methadone, three of supplying diazepam and one of possessing drugs with intent to supply illegally.

Judge Paul Hoffman, the Honorary Recorder of York, said: "It was a weak thing to do, a criminal thing to do. "You are now a disgraced man and a broken man."

He jailed Turner for two years, suspended for two years, and made a 12-month supervision order. Turner will also have to pay up to £2,000 of his defence costs.

His barrister, Rodney Ferm, said: "He is a man of fragile and shy, retiring nature."

In January 2003, he had been diagnosed as suffering from severe depression and mental illness, but in spite of being too ill to work had struggled on with his pharmacy until he sold it in September. He had voluntarily retired from the pharmacists' register and had no intention of working as a chemist again. He had not benefited financially.

Updated: 08:41 Saturday, July 17, 2004