CRIMINAL CASE NO. 67 OF 2011
COURT: This is a rather odd case. You are a young woman - at the time of the offence, you were 21 years of age - and you have a clear record; yet you are a trafficker in dangerous drugs in a fairly significant way. That much is evident, not simply from the different bags of drugs and the different quantities, but also from the digital scales and the piles of empty resealable bags which were found in your premises.
I am inclined to accept, from your lack of previous convictions and that you lived in the premises alone, that you were running this operation for the benefit of yourself and that this was how, after losing your previous job, you were making a living. I am also inclined to accept that you yourself had a drug problem with both of the drugs concerned.
Nevertheless, the quantities are significant enough for you to have arrived at the High Court. The tariff band applicable to the 8.51 grammes of methanphetamine hydrochloride is 3 to 7 years’ imprisonment for up to 12 grammes, and for the 15.16 grammes of ketamine, 4 to 6 years’ imprisonment.
Where, as here, there is a combination of drugs which are being trafficked in to which separate tariffs apply, one must be careful not to arrive at an overall starting point which treats the drugs as though they had all been of the more serious type, thus attracting a higher tariff for a larger quantity.
In my view, the proper approach is to assess the starting point for the more serious quantity of drug, which in this case is methanphetamine hydrochloride, and then to enhance the sentence to reflect the fact that another different drug in significant quantity was also being trafficked in.
The starting point for the methanphetamine hydrochloride alone in this case, had it stood alone, would be 6 years’ imprisonment. I intend to adopt an overall starting point to reflect the fact that 15.16 grammes of ketamine were also being trafficked in to one of 7 years’ imprisonment.
In adopting that overall starting point, I have factored into the equation the type of trafficking and trafficker with whom I am dealing; in other words, a sole operator who appears to have recently embarked on trafficking in drugs for the first time in your life.
You have pleaded guilty at the first available opportunity - in other words, before the Magistrates’ Court - and your plea is the only real matter of mitigation in this case. It has been said that good character counts for little in offences of this nature, but I want to make it clear I have in fact taken it into account in adopting the overall starting point applicable to someone like you embarking on this venture for the first time.
You are entitled to a full one-third discount from a starting point of 7 years.
Accordingly, the sentence of the court is that you go to prison for 4 years and 8 months.