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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Cannabis Dealer is Spared Jail
Shields Gazette
Wednesday 07 Jun 2006 A DRUG dealer who sold cannabis to friends to fund his 46-year habit has been spared jail. Sixty-year-old Thomas Harney yesterday told New-castle Crown Court he had been smoking cannabis since he was 14, and did not intend to stop. But the judge warned him if he did not change his ways he would end up behind bars. Harney admitted possession of cannabis with intent to supply and possession of amphetamine when police raided his home in Fountains Court, Hebburn, on November 7, last year. He showed officers to a cupboard where there was 66.6g of cannabis resin stored in a multi-vitamin container, 18g of cannabis mixed with tobacco in a pouch, and a paper wrap containing 1.22g amphetamine powder. Police also found a debtors' 'tick' list of the people to whom Harney sold drugs. Prosecutor Belinda Black-burn told the court police estimated the cannabis seized to be worth between £338 and £423, and the amphetamine worth £12.20. She said: "He would buy a 'nine-bar' every week to supply himself and friends. "He told police 'I don't make a lot of money, it is just to keep me in my own smoke and for my friends, to a certain degree'. "He said he had no remorse for his actions." Mitigating, Paul Caulfield said: "He has been smoking cannabis for 46 years. "He is clearly addicted and what he was about, given the parlous state of his finances, was to try and explain to police how he financed his habit. "The people he supplied were all regular drug users. They were not children who had been corrupted." Sentencing Harney to nine months prison, suspended for two years, Judge John Evans warned the dealer he had come close to being jailed. Judge Evans said he would suspend the sentence because to imprison Harney would mean he would lose his flat and become a burden on society. http://www.southtynesidetoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=1111&ArticleID=1548319
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