ICE is hideous and one of the most destructive illegal drugs on the market, a judge has said in sentencing a woman caught with $40,000 worth of the substance.
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Judge Jennifer English said the federal government was currently mounting a major media campaign warning of the impact of the drug, which is having a crushing effect on many regional communities.
The judge made her remarks in Wagga District Court while jailing 36-year-old Leeton woman Jasmin Holt for deemed supply of 37.91 grams of ice at Young on October 27 last year.
Police who went to a motel found the drugs, a glass pipe used to smoke ice, $4450 in cash and a number of plastic resealable bags in the room Holt and three people were in.
Holt immediately owned up to possessing the drugs, but lied she had found them in Anderson Park.
“I just fell across it, I was going to use it to set myself up,” Holt told police at the time.
Giving evidence during her sentencing hearing last week, mother of three Holt said ice had killed two of her friends while she had been in custody.
She said she supplied ice to finance her own habit.
Judge English on Thursday said 16.9g of the ice seized by police in the motel room had a purity of 77.5 per cent.
She said that level of purity was rarely seen.
Judge English found Holt was remorseful and contrite for her offence, but considered Holt’s prospects of rehabilitation remain guarded.
She said that with drug rehabilitation, Holt might be able to turn her life around, but it would not be easy for her.
“She impresses me as someone who is clearly intelligent and articulate,” Judge English said,
“She does not know how to stay clean, she gets depressed and self medicates.”
Just 17 days before her arrest last October, Holt was given two suspended jail sentences for resisting police and assaulting police.
Judge English revoked those sentences and gave Holt a fixed jail term of 12 months backdated to October 27.
For supplying the ice, Holt was given a head sentence of three years from January 27 with 15 months’ non-parole expiring April 26 next year.
A condition of Holt’s release on parole could be entering a residential drug rehabilitation facility.
Holt will be subject to random urine tests while on parole for 21 months, and if drugs are found in her system even once she will go back to jail to serve the rest of her sentence.
