British Judge Warns ‘Rich, Privileged’ in Student’s Drug Death

Three people involved in the case of a British government minister’s daughter who died after a party at Oxford University were jailed Friday by a judge who warned the “rich and privileged” against dabbling in drugs.

The three admitted possessing heroin after the June 11 death of Olivia Channon, daughter of Paul Channon, Britain’s secretary of trade and industry.

Sebastian Guinness, 23, the dead woman’s third cousin and an heir to the Guinness brewing and banking fortune, was jailed for four months. Rosie Johnston, 23, Olivia Channon’s best friend, received a nine-month sentence. Judge Philip Otton gave a four-year sentence to an unemployed musician, Paul Dunstan, 31, who admitted supplying heroin to the 22-year-old student who died after drinking a pint of sherry and taking the drug.

“There is, perhaps, a notion in our society that it is acceptable for the rich and privileged to dabble in hard drugs,” Otton said. “It is not. These sentences are intended to show that it is not.”

Channon was found after an end-of-term celebration slumped over the bed of fellow student Count Gottfried von Bismarck, 22, the great-great-grandson of Germany’s “Iron Chancellor,” Prince Otto von Bismarck. He was fined $115 in September for admitting possession of amphetamine sulfate, known as “speed.”