KEY POINTS:
A mother-of-three who admitted supplying cannabis should think of the example she was setting her children, Judge Peter Rollo said in Tauranga District Court today.
Rebecca Catherine Wade, 31, beneficiary, wept during her sentencing, which resulted in three months on home detention.
Lawyer Peter Attwood said Wade was "classically drug dependent," her thinking was skewed and she needed help.
A heavy drug user, she bought cannabis with the intention of supplying her flatmates only.
People were not turning up at all hours and her home was not a "tinny house," he said.
Part of the pay-off if Wade sold enough was that "she effectively received free cannabis."
Mr Attwood said it was ironic but the defendant took her motherhood role very seriously, despite committing the offences "virtually in front of" her young children.
"You owe it to them not to act in this way," Judge Rollo told her.
"It is not a way forward for you or them. This sort of offending must stop. You need to measure that against what is best for your children."
The judge acknowledged that Wade was not supplying cannabis to the general public when she was found with eight tinnies, but to her sister and flatmates.
Imposing a term of home detention rather than imprisonment, he noted that the other people who shared the house had said they would not be consuming alcohol or smoking cannabis to support Wade.
Judge Rollo prohibited her from alcohol and illegal drugs while on detention and ordered her to undertake counselling and other programmes as directed by a probation officer.
Six months post-detention conditions would focus on her rehabilitation, he said.
Wade was also given 150 hours of community work.
- NZPA
