A DRUG dealer has been jailed after he was caught smoking a cannabis joint as he was selling heroin in the centre of Torquay.

Police spotted Joshua Godfrey smoking the spliff in South Street on June 14 this year and discovered a major heroin dealing operation at his nearby home.

He had been recruited by a gang from Liverpool which supplied him with drugs which he diluted with caffeine and paracetamol before delivering to their customers.

He had more than £11,000 worth of heroin at his house and cutting agents ready for the next consignment.

Texts showed him accounting for every penny he spent and received to his bosses in Merseyside.

Godfrey was a heavy cannabis user who had run into debt after losing his job as a building labourer and who was pressured into dealing class A drugs in return for £500 a week and a reduction in the amount he owed.

He was already on a community order at the time because he took his grandmother’s £6,000 Toyota Yaris for a joyride in 2020 and let two friends drive it in Shaldon, where it crashed and was written off.

Godfrey, aged 30, of Vansittart Rd, Torquay, admitted possession of heroin with intent to supply and was jailed for two years and six months by Judge Peter Johnson at Exeter Crown Court.

He told him: ‘You were seen smoking a spliff in the street, which for someone dealing class A drugs is perhaps not the cleverest thing to do.

‘I am told you suffer from ADHD and were self-medicating with cannabis.

‘While you were working, you were able to afford your habit, however, you were not able to carry on and ran up a debt of more than £4,000. As is now common, you were required to repay that debt through drugs supply.

‘In so doing, you crossed a Rubicon between something that was illegal and into something that was going to get you sent to prison.’

Mr Charlie Barrass-Evans, prosecuting, said Godfrey was caught at a time when Devon and Cornwall police were conducting a combined operation with colleagues from Merseyside to target drug dealers.

He was picked up while smoking a joint in South Street, Torquay at 12.50 pm on June 14 and found with two wraps of heroin which he had gone out to deliver.

His home was searched and 117.11 grams of heroin with a purity of 11 per cent with a street value of £11,690 were recovered along with 1.76 kilos of cutting agents.

This offence put him in breach of a community order for taking a vehicle without consent, imposed after he ‘borrowed’ his grandmother’s car on October 24, 2020, and drove it to Shaldon, where it crashed and was written off.

Mr Paul Dentith, defending, said Godfrey was pressurised into selling drugs and was acting under direction at all times. He said this was shown by messages in which he reported all takings and expenditure to those above him in the train.

He said Godfrey had been complying well with the previous community order until he was arrested for the drugs offence and had completed more than half the 100 hours of community work which he was ordered to do.