The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has struck off Jonathan Michael Hindrik Edens (GPhC registration number 2061869) for stealing medicines and faking prescriptions to obtain controlled drugs.

Mr Edens was addicted to heroin and stole diamorphine from the pharmacy where he worked, the GPhC disciplinary committee heard last week.

Mr Edens, who was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for his offences in 2010, was unable to attend the hearing and was not represented. However, he had admitted to "fabricating patient names and falsifying prescriptions" upon arrest.

Mr Edens stole sedatives from Stonehouse Pharmacy and forged prescriptions for diamorphine for his own use, said case manager Jeremy Loran. But Mr Edens had reported falsely obtaining other drugs under "extreme coercion" from his girlfriend Angela Jones, Mr Loran added, who he claimed had "physically assaulted and threatened" him.

Following his arrest in 2010, Mr Edens had been released on bail and had attempted to use falsified prescriptions again at Gloucester Hospital, Mr Loran said. "At that stage Mr Edens had already been on two sets of police bail in relation to very similar offences," he added.

Mr Edens had written a letter stating he was "continuing to address his addiction" on August 1, 2011, the committee heard, and had also "accepted his dishonesty". But his letter did not indicate that he had "any proper insight" into the seriousness of his dishonesty, the committee's chairman Christopher Gibson concluded.

The offences involved a number of "aggravating factors" including an abuse of trust, "sustained and repeated misconduct" and dishonesty, Mr Gibson stressed.

"We would also say that there was an additional aggravating factor, namely that there was a vulnerable victim," he said. "We have no doubt that Miss Jones did not look like a vulnerable victim to Mr Edens when she was putting pressure on him to obtain drugs for her to fuel her addiction, but if Mr Edens had considered the situation as a pharmacist should have done, he would have realised that she was indeed a vulnerable victim."

Mr Edens' conduct was "quite incompatible with his remaining and being a pharmacist", Mr Gibson concluded. "We believe that Mr Edens can only possibly be at the beginning of the process of addressing his addiction problems, and we believe that he has not yet shown proper insight into his dishonesty or the risk at which he placed Miss Jones by procuring drugs for her," he said.

Mr Gibson stressed that a suspension would be "inappropriate" and ruled to remove Mr Edens from the register.