Cannabis seller avoids jail

A sickness beneficiary caught trying to sell cannabis to visitors of inmates at Northland's Ngawha Prison has been sentenced to nine months' home detention.

Graham David Reeves, 49, from Ngawha, 7km northeast of Kaikohe, had earlier pleaded guilty to one charge of possessing cannabis for supply, one of possessing cannabis plant, and one each of possessing a pipe for smoking cannabis and equipment for smoking methamphetamine, or P, the Northern Advocate reported.

Police searched Reeves' car while he was parked at the prison visitors' centre on November 28 last year.

They found 30 cannabis tinnies and
equipment for smoking P.

At the High Court at Whangarei, Justice Rodney Hansen spared Reeves a jail term partly because of his poor health and addiction problems, despite his 20 previous marijuana convictions.