Whitby woman smuggled cannabis into UK from Thailand

Laura Brady, 34, was paid £100 per delivery to accept packages of the illegal drug sent from Thailand, said Gabrielle Wilks, prosecuting.

When she went on to sell some of the drugs in street deals, she received threats from a drug dealer higher up in the chain called “The Major”.

Brady, 34, cried as she was jailed at York Crown Court for 20 months for cannabis smuggling and supplying cannabis.

“If you engage with the supply of drugs you bear the consequences,” Judge Simon Hickey told her. “I have no real sympathy.”

She had received three separate deliveries of cannabis – a kilo in September last year, another just under a kilo in October and a half kilo.

Brady, of Birch Grove, Sleights, near Whitby, pleaded guilty to both offences.

Her barrister Erin Kitson-Parker said locking her up would lead to her losing her job, the first one she had ever had.

She would also lose her home of four years, because it was rented and it was very difficult to get social housing in Whitby, said the defence barrister.

She had been trying to change her ways, “having been brought up in a criminal environment,” said Ms Kitson-Parker.

She pleaded with the judge to let Brady keep her freedom and give her a suspended sentence or a community order, but the judge pointed out Brady had breached other court orders 17 times, and was currently not doing a community order imposed when she had breached an earlier community order.

Brady had been taking cannabis and cocaine, the court heard.