Drug rap sparks U-turn

A YOUNG Killarney man who supplied marijuana on nearly 20 occasions in just weeks has claimed his brush with the law forced him to change his ways.

Police raided Ethan Samuel Webb’s home in October 2019, where they caught the then 19year-old trying to stash something near the fence line.

Warwick District Court heard officers caught Webb with 9g of marijuana in three different packages, along with a smaller quantity of the drug, marijuana seeds, and drug utensils such as bongs and grinders inside the house.

Crown prosecutor Elizabeth Kelso said it wasn’t until police searched the now 21-year-old’s phone that they uncovered he’d been dealing marijuana regularly in the five weeks leading up to the raid.

Webb supplied the drug 19 times to eight customers in amounts between 1.2g and 3g, valued at $20-$50 each, and on one occasion offered to give someone two MDMA pills.

Webb ran into trouble again days later when he went to the Warwick police station to be charged while carrying a small amount of marijuana and a cone piece in his backpack.

Ms Kelso said Webb racked up another several charges in April last year when police busted him living at an address outside his bail conditions and with an even bigger drug stash.

Webb was nabbed with 75.1g marijuana hidden in his bags, two homemade bongs and drug utensils, and two marijuana plants growing in the back yard.

“His supplies were unsophisticated, they involved only low-level street supplies, and he himself fell into that very special category of still being a teenager at the time he committed those offences,” Ms Kelso said.

“He had either the stupidity or the audacity to take drugs with him when he attended the police station, and also continued to use drugs despite being on the police radar and charged with those earlier offences.”

Defence barrister Jessica Goldie said Webb spiralled into drug addiction at 16 after his father died, but was now living in a halfway house and had been clean for five months.

Webb read his own handwritten apology to the court, saying he’d turned his life around and had aspirations to join the navy while staying sober for the rest of his life.

“I cannot take back the things that I have done. I’ve done wrong by causing harm to society, the community, my family, my friends, and myself through my actions,” he said. His rehabilitation efforts were described as “tremendous” by Judge Suzanne Sheridan.

Webb pleaded guilty to 20 counts of supplying a dangerous drug, another nine drugrelated charges, and one count of breaching bail. He was placed on probation for two years. No conviction was recorded.