A high court ruling against the sale of cocaine by the NSW Crime Commission is not a surprise according to law experts.
The commission authorised the sale of nearly six kilograms of unlawfully imported cocaine as part of controlled operations, none of which was recovered.
In 2005 the NSW Crime Commission authorised an informant to sell the cocaine to alleged drug dealers, as part of an immunity deal.
The operation lead to the arrests of four men who bought the cocaine from the informant but none of the drugs were ever recovered.
The High Court today ruled the Crime Commission had acted beyond its powers in authorising the operation.
"Controlled operations that involved the selling of large quantities of cocaine to users was conduct likely to seriously endanger the health or safety of those people and should not have been authorised by the NSW Crime Commission."
The High Court said the risks of putting such a large amount of cocaine on the streets far outweighed the results of the operation.
"The commission had estimated that the conduct of the controlled operations using Tom was that between 70,000 and 100,000 dosage units of cocaine would reach the streets," the High Court said.
"The Court held that a reasonable person in the position of the commissioner would have foreseen that this would involve a risk of seriously endangering the health of at least some of the purchasers of the cocaine.
Hugh Macken from the Law Society says it is a common sense decision.
"Putting kilograms of cocaine onto the streets is going to endanger people's health," Mr Macken said.
"Those sorts of operations were never, in my view, authorised in the first instance."
