News / Ex addict escapes jail
AN ABERDEEN man who admitted possessing heroin worth almost £1,000 with intent to supply escaped a prison sentence at Lerwick Sheriff Court on Thursday.
Nicholas Stokes, aged 48, of 35b Menzies Road, was arrested when police searched a house in Sandveien, Lerwick, on 28 August last year and found him with eight grams of the class A drug.
The court was told that the 48 year old had travelled to the islands with and acquaintance and appeared to have stolen the drugs from him, intending to share them with friends.
Stokes had subsequently entered a methadone programme to drop his addiction.
Defence agent Lynn Bentley said that Stokes had only become a heroin user“fairly late in life” and had reduced his consumption of methadone from daily to weekly, testing negative for illegal drugs for the past three months.
Sheriff Graeme Napier said he took a very dim view of people coming up from Aberdeen with drugs, but he accepted that Stokes was not the person who had actually imported the heroin.
He restricted his sentence to 12 months probation and 160 hours communityservice as Stokes had taken steps to deal with his drug problem.
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