September 02, 2012

269 cannabis offers caught in text messages

By David Clarkson

A man who texted 269 offers to supply cannabis over a two-month period has been jailed for three years nine months.

Ford William George Hurunui, 24, was running what Christchurch District Court Judge Alistair Garland called ?a commercial operation of some substance? in the Nelson and Motueka area between September and October 2011.

Police became aware of the upturn in drug activity and got interception warrants for several phones, including Hurunui?s, and found all the messages.

Hurunui admitted conspiring to sell cannabis, selling cannabis, conspiring and offering to supply the class A drug LSD, as well as charges of breaching a community work sentence, assault arising from a family dispute, wilful damage, and receiving a television set stolen in a burglary.

Defence counsel Richard Peters said Hurunui had offered very early to plead guilty, and urged that a home detention sentence be imposed.

But Judge Garland said: ?Drugs, especially LSD and also cannabis, cause a considerable amount of social dislocation and harm in our society. Drugs of this kind are the source of considerable evil.?

He said Hurunui had been raised in a Mongrel Mob family where violence was regularly used for discipline and his parents were drug users and dealers. ?You grew up in an environment where cannabis use was part of your everyday life.?

He noted that there was no evidence that Hurunui had possessed any LSD or had completed the sale as offered. Hurunui told police he had not gone through with the two LSD deals, but the cannabis dealing was ?all true?.