The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Two jailed over heroin haul
A DRUG dealer was jailed for five years yesterday after police found a haul of heroin worth more than £200,000 in a cooker in someone else’s house.
Kenneth McLaren was targeted in a surveillance operation after police received intelligence that he might be responsible for the supply of the Class A drug in Arbroath.
The court heard that officers watching McLaren saw another person frequently visiting his house and that man was later seen meeting known drug users in the town.
Those addicts revealed that when they contacted McLaren to arrange to buy drugs he would then tell them to meet George Craigie, who would hand over the heroin.
When police turned up at Craigie’s home and detained him he told them: “There’s stuff in the bottom of the cooker.”
Officers found a carrier bag with almost 9lb of heroin in a drawer in the cooker. The drugs would have been worth around £200,000 if sold on the streets. They also discovered a locked money box which Craigie claimed he did not have a key for.
McLaren’s home was then searched but nothing of significance so far as drugs or money was found but, when he was searched at Arbroath police station, officers found a key in his jeans.
The key was passed on to officers who were still searching Craigie’s house and it was found to open the locked box where another £11,840 worth of heroin was found.
Advocate depute Margaret Barron said: “The drugs recovered within the carrier bag were at a higher purity than usually sold in Tayside.” The bulk of the heroin was found to be either 12 or 13% pure.
McLaren, 50, of Helen Street, Arbroath, admitted being concerned in the supply of the Class A drug between August 13 and October 2 last year.
Lord Glennie said he would have faced a seven-year jail sentence for the offence, but for his guilty plea and imposed a five-year term on him.
The judge told him at the High Court in Edinburgh: “It is a significant quantity of drugs. The fact that this was, I am told, a course of conduct designed to help you feed your own drug addiction is an explanation, but not an excuse for what you have done,” he said.
Craigie, 57, of Brantwood Avenue, Dundee, admitted being concerned in the supply of the drug on October 2 and was jailed for two-and-a-half years.