'Hard up' man sentenced over trying to sell drugs

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A sickness beneficiary caught trying to sell tinnies of cannabis to visitors of inmates at Northland's Ngawha Prison has been sentenced to nine months' home detention.

Graham David Reeves, 49, from Ngawha, 7km northeast of Kaikohe, had earlier pleading guilty to one charge of possessing cannabis for supply, one of possessing cannabis plant, and one each of possessing a pipe for smoking cannabis and equipment for smoking methamphetamine, or P, The Northern Advocate reported.

Police searched Reeves's car while he was parked at the prison visitors' centre on November 28 last year.

They found 30 cannabis tinnies in a safe disguised as a dictionary and equipment for smoking P.

He told police he was "hard-up" and wanted to sell the cannabis to double his money.

Sentencing at the High Court at Whangarei, Justice Rodney Hansen spared Reeves a jail term partly because of his poor health and addiction problems, despite his 20 previous marijuana convictions.

- NZPA