A YOUNG cocaine addict who became a dealer after running up a massive £21,000 drug debt has been jailed for more than three years.
Carlisle Crown Court heard today (FRI) how Liam Christopher Robert Bailey began using cannabis in his early teens and then turned to cocaine, to which he then became hooked.
As Bailey, now aged 21, agreed to work down his debt, he was provided with a mobile phone, a large amount of cocaine and the contact details for potential customers.
But when his car was stopped on Dalston Road in Carlisle last April, several wraps of the class A drug and a small amount of money was recovered. And when police searched his city home, they found more than 400g of cocaine potentially worth up to £40,000, along with weighing scales, plastic packaging and almost £6,000 cash.
Bailey, of Henderson Road, Carlisle, admitted being concerned in the supply of – and possessing – the illegal substance, and was handed a 40-month jail term.
“Another young life ruined,” Mark Shepherd, defending, told the court of Bailey, the father of an eight-month-old child. “He was completely and utterly out of his depth. He regrets what he has done bitterly.”
