AN ICE addict who financed her habit by selling to other users has told a judge the deadly drug was “running the world.”
“It really is,” 36-year-old Jasmin Holt said in Wagga District Court in response to a question from her solicitor David Barron about the damage ice use has inflicted on her.
Holt, of Leeton, spoke of the extent of ice usage and the harm to users and their families during sentence proceedings before Judge Jennifer English.
Holt was caught with 37.91 grams of the highly-addictive drug, an ice pipe and $4450 in cash when police searched a motel room she was staying in at Young on October 27.
From the witness box, the mother of three who started using cannabis as a 13-year-old said she had been able to manage amphetamine use in the past, but taking ice changed everything.
“What is it about ice in particular?” Mr Barron asked Holt.
“Just the damage it has done to me and my ex-partner’s little brother,” Holt replied.
“He is 16 and can’t string a sentence together anymore.
“In custody, the percentage of inmates who are on ice … it’s running the world.
“It really is.
“Someone will give it to my kids one day.”
“How would you feel about that?” Mr Barron asked.
“I would understand how someone would feel about what I was doing,” Holt replied.
Holt said since being in custody, two men aged under 40 she was friends with had died from heart attacks because of ice.
Holt said she had not been on ice for long before her arrest.
“How were you financing your drug use?” Mr Barron asked.
“I was financing it by dealing,” Holt said.
“Was there any left over money?” Mr Barron asked.
“No,” Holt said.
Holt admitted to lying to the arresting police when she told them she had found the ice – with an estimated street value of $40,000 – in a park at Young.
“Is it the case you feared for your own safety if you revealed where the drugs came from?” Mr Barron asked.
“Yes,” Holt said.
Holt told the court that at the time of her arrest she was using ice 10 times a day.
Crown solicitor John Hall told the court the 37.91 grams of ice Holt was caught with was 12 times the trafficking amount under the law and more than five times the indictable quantity.
Holt said she had been clean for the past six months in custody, but worried about her ability to stay off ice.
She said short-term rehabilitation programs had not helped in the past and no programs were available to her in prison beyond drug and alcohol counselling.
“I can get myself clean, it’s just staying clean (that has proven too difficult),” Holt told the court.
“I realise that I deserve to be in jail for what I have done, but I have never been so clear minded as I am now.”
Holt has pleaded guilty to deemed supply of a prohibited drug.
Charges of possessing equipment to administer a prohibited drug (an ice pipe) and having goods in custody suspected of being stolen or otherwise illegally obtained (the cash) will be taken into account when the judge sentences Holt.
The court heard that 17 days before her drug arrest, Holt was given a 15-month suspended jail sentence in Leeton Local Court on unrelated charges.
Judge English will re-sentence Holt on those matters when she finalises the drug case next week and has indicated the sentence would have to be at least partially accumulated.
