A DRUG supplier who was responsible for 10 Hawick youngsters being hospitalised after selling them pink pills has been shown mercy by a judge.

Jamie Thomson, now 21, was facing jail after admitting culpably and recklessly selling tablets of an unknown substance which resulted in the youths falling unconcious and requiring urgent medical treatment.

But sentence was previously deferred after Lady Morag Wise was told Thomson had enroled in a year-long residential programme run by a christian charity in Kilmacolm in Renfrewshire, aimed at making young men completely free from their drink or drug addictions.

And when the case recalled at the High Court in Edinburgh last week Lady Wise took the unusual step of admonishing Thomson for the offence to reflect the remarkable transformation in his life.

Police in Hawick, were alerted in 2015 when a 15-year-old boy was seen standing on a bridge outside a school apparently under the influence of drugs.

He was taken to Borders General Hospital near Melrose and told medics that he had taken “one pink jelly”.

Others fell ill and tests carried out on some of the youngsters later revealed traces of benzodiapine, a psychoactive drug, in their urine.

Thomson - formerly of Peebles and now living in the Leith area of Edinburgh - admitted culpably and recklessly supplying tablets of “an unknown noxious psychoactive chemical substance or substances” to youths in exchange for money, putting their lives at risk by rendering them unconscious or insensible and requiring immediate hospitalisation and emergency treatment.

The offence was committed between August 18 and 21 in 2015 at his then home in Hawick’s Havelock Street and elsewhere in the town, just days after Thomson had been freed on bail at Jedburgh Sheriff Court for another offence.

The High Court was told that Thomson was selling the pills for a £1 each.

He claimed they were legal highs from Thailand.

But 10 males - aged between 14 and 18 - fell ill and had to be treated in hospital.

However it emerged that since the offence Thomson had turned his life around in a positive fashion attending and completing various programmes approved by the court.

As a result Lady Wise admonished Thomson and dismissed the case.

Ross Dow of Galashiels-based WSA criminal defence lawyers said: "By admonishing Jamie Thomson the court recognised just how much, in the face of a very troubled upbringing, he had managed to turn his life around since committing the offence and in doing so acknowledged that it is not always in the interests of justice to only focus on punishment and retribution."