SAN FRANCISCO "LSD GURU" FACES 20 YEARS IN JAIL

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 22 (Reuters) - A San Francisco judge on Friday closed the
book on a psychedelic drug maker once known as the city's "LSD guru" who was
captured in Canada after spending close to 20 years underground as a
fugitive.

In a move one attorney said marked a last hurrah for San Francisco's
once-famous "Flower Children", Judge Samuel Conti sentenced Nicholas Sand,
57, to an additional five years in prison for jumping a $50,000 bail in
1976.

Conti had sentenced Sand to 15 years in prison in 1974 for manufacturing LSD
and evading taxes. But Sand remained free on appeal, and in 1976 fled to the
Vancouver area.

"This was a last hurrah for the Flower Children," Sand's attorney, Patrick
Hallinan, said after hearing his client's total sentence rise to 20 years.
"It wasn't fair but it was foreseeable."

Sand had links to leaders in the Hippie movement in the 1960s and 1970s, as
well as to the late psychedelic guru Timothy Leary and the Hells Angels
motorcycle gang.

After fleeing the United States, he went underground. But Sands was arrested
in Canada on Sept. 26, 1996, when police raided a drug lab in Port
Coquitlam, outside Vancouver, that was producing a number of drugs,
including LSD, Ecstasy and Nexus. The lab contained enough raw materials to
make 45 million hits of LSD, police said.

He was extradited to the United States last May to serve out his original
sentence. In October, Conti found Sand guilty of the additional crime of
skipping bail.

Albert Boro, another Sand attorney, said his client remained as committed to
LSD and other drugs as he was in the 1960s, when the "Flower Children"
crowded San Francisco with their message of free love and drug
experimentation.

"He does believe in the therapeutic effects of (LSD), and the religious
aspects of it, the spiritual aspects," Boro said. "He is really a true
believer in the psychedelic movement, and has always been."

LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide, was developed in the 1940s and originally
used to mimic psychosis for research purposes. Later, such writers as Allen
Ginsberg and Alan Watts popularised LSD for its hallucinogenic qualities.