'Social supply' dealer offered cannabis cakes on Facebook, court is told

Police found nearly 68 grammes of the drug, worth more than £670 and separated into dealer bags, when they raided the property on Ryecroft Street in Ossett in May of last year.

Prosecutor Daniel Ingham told Leeds Crown Court that officers had been tipped off following an unrelated domestic matter involving Conor Jay Ineson.

Along with the drugs, they found scales and seized his phone, on which they found messages posted on Facebook Messenger by Ineson offering the cakes.

They also found evidence of the 25-year-old trying to source the drug from oversees, while asking questions on how best to transport seeds and conversations about how to grow the plants.

He admitted a charge of possessing cannabis with an intent to supply.

However, it was accepted by the Crown that it was a 'social supply' business, selling only to close friends.

Ineson has one previous conviction for coercive control, for which he was jailed last year for 16 months. The drug charge predates that offence.

Mitigating, Matthew Stewart said that Ineson, now of The Common, Thornhill, had moved on with his life, was in a new relationship and had enrolled on a course with prospects of a job in future.

He said: "It was a time in his life that he lacked maturity. He has turned his life around."

The judge, Recorder Simon Myerson QC said of Ineson's cannabis operation: "This had been going on for some months.

"You were funding yourself for free and supplying your friends, and no doubt getting a little extra money on the side, but it's not what I would call commercial dealing.

"You made some pretty determined for growing cannabis and so forth.

"You admitted it from the first instance, you made no attempt to blame someone else, and you have made considerable progress."

He handed him an eight-month jail term, suspended for 12 months, and ordered him to carry out 60 hours of unpaid work.