Jail warning after opium found in raid
Police raided a woman’s home in Maidstone and discovered opium being smoked there, a court has heard.
Cheryl Clarkson, who was discovered in her Dickens Road living room in a “somewhat surprised state”, is now facing sentence after admitting permitting premises to be used for smoking the Class A drug.
Prosecutor Simon Blackford said there were two men at the 35-year-old’s home when the raid was carried out on September 1 last year.
One made off and the other was hiding in the bathroom.
“There was a substantial quantity of drugs paraphernalia and some drugs,” Mr Blackford told Maidstone Crown Court.
Clarkson was at the time subject to a suspended prison sentence, imposed in May this year, for drug-related offending.
Mary Jacobson, defending, said there was a drug rehabilitation requirement that was “going very well indeed”.
Clarkson had made “massive strides”, she said.
Adjourning sentence for reports until after December 3 and granting bail, Judge Jeremy Carey told Clarkson: “I do not rule out by any means the possibility you will be going to prison.
“I say that not to frighten you but to bring home the reality of the situation.”
ajsmith@thekmgroup.co.uk Lenham residents are continuing to fight housing plans that they fear would turn their village into a town.
Two recent meetings on the subject have seen hundreds of households voice their objections to Maidstone Borough Council’s proposals for more than 1,700 homes there.
Under the authority’s draft Local Plan, the historic village’s