A WORKINGTON man has been jailed after racking up his FIFTH cannabis supply conviction.
Police attended Deri George Hendren’s Blackburn Street address on April 22 last year.
There they found a drugs stash comprising four separate bags of skunk cannabis potentially worth almost £2,000 in total, along with digital weighing scales and scraps of paper bearing the names and bank dealers which a prosecutor told Carlisle Crown Court belonged to “some of his customers”.
Also found was a mobile phone containing text messages linked to drug peddling. However, the court heard there were other people above 34-year-old Hendren in the supply chain. One was said to have exerted “downward pressure”.
Hendren admitted supplying cannabis during March and April, 2018, and possessing the class B drug with intent to supply. He had four previous cannabis supply convictions on his record and was on licence at the time of his latest offending having received a 27-month jail term in 2016.
A probation officer concluded he was currently suitable to be managed in the community, while his lawyer suggested a suspended prison sentence would act as a “sword of Damocles hanging over him”.
But Judge James Adkin imposed an immediate 18-month prison sentence, telling Hendren: “You do seem to be a recidivist cannabis dealer. That makes the case more serious.”