A young man who turned to drug trafficking as a way to ease his financial struggles after losing his job has been sentenced to 15 months in prison.
Harley Luke Sturzaker, 26, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court of Tasmania to trafficking in a controlled substance and possessing various items used in the production and sale of drugs.
During a search of his Norwood home on April 28, 2023, police found a mechanical pill press, pill press stamps and various powders stashed under his bed.
In the same bedroom, officers also seized snaplock bags containing 10.5g of cocaine and lidocaine, 16.3g of methylamphetamine and numerous tables containing other illicit drugs.
They also located two sets of digital scales, 16 shotgun shells and seven .22 calibre rounds.
In the garage, police discovered 71.79g of cannabis, a cannabis mix and a smoking device.
Justice Robert Pearce said Sturzaker intended to sell the methylamphetamine, cocaine and cannabis and estimated the drugs would have fetched around $18,750.
The court heard Sturzaker’s addiction to methylamphetamine began around 2017 and led to a conviction for a “targeted violent home invasion” in 2019, for which he was sentenced to four years and three months in prison.
“Your crime was for financial reasons. You went to some trouble and expense to acquire the materials for manufacture,” Justice Pearce said.
“… even though the scale of your trafficking was not as large as seen in some cases, you ought to have realised the evils of drug trafficking and the damage to the community it causes.”
Justice Pearce convicted Sturzaker, fined him $300 for the ammunition and ordered him to pay $3,349 in drug assessment costs.
He sentenced the young man to 15 months in prison, cumulative to his current sentence, with nine months suspended for two years from his release date.
“I think that hope for your rehabilitation is not lost and, to allow for that, I will suspend part of the term,” Pearce said.
Sturzaker will not be eligible for parole for the initial six months of his sentence.
