Scots boxing champion spends birthday in jail over T in the Park drugs

 

Scots boxing champion spent his 18th birthday behind bars after being caught smuggling drugs into T in the Park inside a tub of hair putty. Trainee barber Thomas Brunton was found to be carrying 71 phenylpiperazine tablets when he was stopped on his way into the music festival. The teenager, a boxing champion at novice level, told police he was planning to experiment with the drug, known as Molly or TFMPP. The tablets, which Brunton planned to share with friends, were criminalised in December 2009. Before that they were a legal high, classified as a legal alternative to ecstasy. Brunton, of Glenlyon Place, Leven, admitted being concerned in the supply of the class-C drug on 8 July, at Perth Sheriff Court on Wednesday. Defence solicitor Jim Litterick said: "He was 17 at the time and spent his 18th birthday in cells in relation to this. "He is in full-time employment as a trainee barber. That is a stop-gap until he can join the Navy. He has sat and passed the skills test and is on the waiting list. "The Navy are keen to have him because he is a talented boxer. He is a novice Scottish Champion and won silver at the Youths Open Class Scottish Championship. "He trains full-time, five nights a week, which makes it all the more ludicrous that he was experimenting with drugs. He has no longstanding issues with drugs or alcohol." Sheriff Robert McCreadie sentenced Brunton to 120 hours of unpaid work as part of a community payback order. He said: "Like a lot of young people his age he experimented with substances. It is such a stupid thing to do. "What is never understood are the consequences socially and for your future. He clearly knew they were illegal or he would not have secreted them the way he did. "I can accept it was an unfortunate incident in an otherwise unblemished career."

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