The police gained entry at that stage. They searched the premises and they found what turned out to be 140 grammes of “Ice” and 1.95 grammes of cannabis resin.
You told the police that they belonged to you and had nothing to do with the person who just visited you and that they were for onward sale to other persons.
I have been made aware of your attempt to co-operate with the authorities but that was unsuccessful and it is quite clearly settled that for an unsuccessful attempt you are not entitled to any additional discount on your sentence. That said, you will have heard me say earlier that if anything does eventuate from the information you have given, it would always be open to you to apply to the Court of Appeal for leave to appeal out of time.
I have also been told about your personal circumstances. There is nothing in them that seems to me to justify any further reduction of sentence.
The real mitigation available to you is your plea of guilty which entitles you to a one-third discount from the sentence which would be appropriate after trial.
Your criminal record is quite extensive and has a fairly usual pattern of offences for somebody who is drug dependent, it has to be said.
Although you have four previous possession of drugs, one possession of equipment and two trafficking offences, the last drugs offence in which you were involved, or of which you were convicted rather, was in 1995. So, in fact, you have gone for quite a long period of time without being convicted of any drugs offence.
A list of drug offences like this would often result in an enhanced starting point. Looking at the sentences that were imposed in the two trafficking cases, they must have been relatively small quantities of whatever the drugs were. I think that this would be a matter where I would be justified, because of the fact that you have had no drugs convictions for such a substantial period of time, in not enhancing the sentence.
As I am sure your counsel has told you, the Court of Appeal has laid down firm guidelines as to the type of sentences that are to be imposed in matters of this nature. Absent very specific reasoning, there is really little room for the court to depart those guidelines.
The amount of “Ice” that you had falls in the band of 70 to 300 grammes which attracts a sentence of 10 to 14 years’ imprisonment. It seems to me that the starting point for 140 grammes of “Ice” would, on the face of it, be about 11 years 2 months.
What had concerned me here is that just looking at the figures provided by the prosecution and your antecedents statement, there is cogent support for your claim that you are drug dependent and you use a combination of “Ice” and cannabis.
I am not going to pretend to be able to do very accurate arithmetic but if you are consuming drugs on a daily basis, it seems to me farfetched to suggest that you would have one little stash that you would be using for your own consumption and another stash which you would be selling on. I think commonsense, and fairly long experience in these matters suggests, that you were and would have been using some of these drugs for your own consumption.
That, to my mind, enables me to reduce the starting point arbitrarily - I am not going to try to do it arithmetically - to take account of the fact that at least some of these drugs would have been for your own consumption. So rather than take a starting point of 11 years and 3 months I am going to take a starting point of 10 years and 6 months.
I am not going to add anything on specific for the cannabis. That quantity of cannabis in the light of the large amount of “Ice” that you had really is not of any particular significance and I do not think it would be appropriate to increase the starting point artificially to allow for that.
So, looking at the circumstances where I am satisfied that at least some of these drugs would have been for your own consumption, and the long time since you have had a previous drugs conviction, the starting point I am going to take is 10 years 6 months. That is to be reduced by a third for your plea which results in a net sentence of 7 years.