Whitby drug dealer jailed for over two years for peddling high-purity cocaine

Joseph Greene, 26, was caught red-handed with a cocaine stash worth about £11,000 in street deals, York Crown Court heard.

He appeared for sentence today (June 30) when judge Sean Morris, the Recorder of York, told him it had to be jail because cocaine supply was having a devastating effect on coastal and rural communities in North Yorkshire and feeding other forms of criminality.

Prosecutor Stephen Grattage said that Greene had initially denied supplying the drug, claiming he had simply bought in bulk for his own use.

However, he finally admitted possessing a Class A drug with intent to supply after a trial had been scheduled.

Police swooped into action in March 2021 when they stopped an Audi in the Whitby area.

Greene was in the driver’s seat and was found with a “large ball” of cocaine.

He was brought in for questioning but claimed the drugs were for his own personal use and that he had bought in bulk because it was cheaper and, bizarrely, because he was “working in a mine”.

Officers searched his home and found just over 110g of cocaine at 77-per-cent purity, with a “street value” of up to £11,100.

“This was cocaine that was going to be sold (per) one gram and was perhaps bulked out,” said Mr Grattage.

He said that police also found weighing scales and Creatine which may have been used as a cutting agent.

Greene, of Birch Avenue, Sleights, claimed he had been working under direction from another individual to whom he owed a drug debt and that the reason he hadn’t owned up earlier was “sheer terror of the consequences”.

Daniel Ingham, for Greene, said the father-of-one had mental-health issues, had never been in trouble before and had recently been offered the chance of legitimate work.

But judge Mr Morris said that despite Greene’s mental-health issues including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), “you know right from wrong, and you know what you were doing was seriously wrong”.

He told Greene: “The selling of drugs is a scourge. It’s the genesis of (so much) crime.

“Nearly all the acquisitive crime I deal with, the motivation is to get drugs and you were pushing it out and that is serious.”

Mr Morris said that Greene was an “otherwise decent young man” and that in many ways it was “tragic” that he found himself in this situation.

“For you, with your difficulties, being inside is going to be extra hard,” he added.

Greene was jailed for two years and three months – a reduced sentence which was kept to a minimum because of his personal difficulties.