A woman who sold $35,000 of ecstasy for a gang over four months says she ended up pushing pills because of her own drug debts.
Amy Scoullar (25), who had no previous convictions, found herself in trouble when she bought her drugs ''on tick'' and ended up indebted to her dealer.
She appeared in the Dunedin District Court yesterday after admitting a representative charge of supplying a class B drug.
Between June 1 and September 20 Scoullar was under the microscope of the Dunedin organised crime squad.
Over that time she would sell MDMA in quantities ranging from 0.1g to 1g, racking up 140g of sales.
Conservative estimates put the sales at about $35,000, Judge Kevin Phillips said.
Scoullar told Probation the criminal associates with whom she had become entangled threatened to harm her and her family if she did not co-operate.
''You were then really in a position where your main supplier could force you to become a seller, because of the amount of money you owed,'' the judge said.
While it was accepted by the Crown that Scoullar was pressured into becoming a drug dealer, Judge Phillips said there was no evidence of that coercion before the court.
It was clear Scoullar also sold ecstasy for profit and to fund her own drug habit, he said.
Judge Phillips said the class B substance was increasingly becoming a problem in New Zealand.
''I wish I could make you read about people whose mental health has impacted by the use of this ... so you could see what your dealing could do to people,'' he said.
Though the judge reached an end point of two years' imprisonment, he said such a sentence would ''destroy'' Scoullar.
She was assessed as being at a low risk of reoffending and the court heard she had disorders which had to be managed with a strict treatment regime.
Nine months' home detention was the appropriate penalty, the judge ruled.
Judge Phillips made it a specific condition of the sentence that Scoullar was not to possess, buy or consume drugs throughout its duration. She would have to submit to a breath or saliva test at any point if requested.
Despite objections by defence counsel Sarah Saunderson-Warner about the defendant's susceptibility to negative influences, 250 hours' community work was also imposed.
