A Tasmanian man caught with almost 60 grams of methylamphetamine and over $23,000 cash has been sentenced to more than two years in prison.
Ashley James Royce Cashion, 30, was found with a total of 57.56 grams of the drug and $23,625 cash across three searches between October 2021 and February 2023.
During the first raid on his home in the Launceston suburb of Waverley, police found 43.21 grams of methylamphetamine, $12,915 in cash and a list of his clients.
Cashion was arrested, charged with trafficking in the drug and bailed, only to be caught out by a second search in February 2022, which uncovered 9.91 grams of methylamphetamine and almost $7,000 in cash.
He was bailed again and, a year later, found with four grams of methylamphetamine, 21 tablets and $3,710 in cash.
Alongside the drugs, police also found a semi-automatic pistol, a pump-action shotgun and ammunition.
Supreme Court Justice Robert Pearce said Cashion used the profits from his sales to fund his own drug habit.
“In late 2021 the first seizure of cash and drugs left you in significant debt to your supplier,” he said.
“You decided that the only way to escape your situation and to continue to pay for drugs for yourself was to continue to traffic, although the scale of trafficking disclosed by the second and third searches was not, at least on the face of it, as great.”
Justice Pearce said “sale motivated purely by profit is regarded as more serious than trafficking to fund addition”.
“Ironically, despite your own addiction, you were unable to resist sale of a drug which fostered and encouraged addiction in others, thus subjecting them to the same terrible situation you found yourself in,” he said.
Pearce sentenced Cashion to two years and nine months in prison for trafficking, suspending one year of the sentence for 18 months.
He will be eligible for parole after serving one year of the 21-month sentence.
