A MAN who admitted supplying class A drugs to friends during a period of “deep” addiction to cocaine has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison.
Nicholas Clyde-Smith (40) had been taking increasingly large amounts of cocaine, moving from one gram per day in 2018 to three to seven grams daily by the time of his offences in late 2021 and the first half of 2022, the Royal Court heard yesterday.
Having come to the attention of the police after messages from him were found on the phone of a drug dealer, Clyde-Smith was charged with being involved in the supply of cocaine, LSD, dimethyltryptamine (known as DMT), ecstasy and cannabis.
Clyde-Smith pleaded guilty to four offences relating to the class A drugs, receiving concurrent sentences of four and a half years for each count, and three months – also concurrent – for his involvement in supplying cannabis, a class B drug.
The court heard that while Clyde-Smith primarily sold drugs to friends and acquaintances, as well as offering lines of cocaine to fellow attendees at parties, he had not made money from these transactions, which were described as “social supplying”.
Crown Advocate Luke Sette, prosecuting, said phone messages and bank details showed Clyde-Smith had purchased one ounce (28 grams) of cocaine for £3,500 in late 2021, most of which was for personal use.
Advocate Stephen Baker, defending, said Clyde-Smith was “profoundly remorseful”.
Referring to his client, Advocate Baker added: “His life came off the rails for a time – he was deeply addicted to cocaine and a heavy user of other drugs and had lost his moral compass.
“He was not thinking clearly and was lucky to be alive. He was taking such quantities of cocaine there must have been a realistic possibility that he suffer a catastrophic medical event.”
Advocate Baker said that while his client was from a “privileged background”, his drug-taking began after a series of incidents that included the death of his sister and his nephew, the break-up of his marriage and a broken back suffered in a paragliding accident.
Announcing the court’s sentence, Commissioner Sir John Saunders said there was “nothing social” about one of the charges, which involved supplying 20 to 30 ecstasy tablets to an associate as a replacement drug after this person’s ability to supply cocaine had been interrupted when a batch became contaminated.
Sir John added that it was regrettable that Clyde-Smith had failed to acknowledge his drug use during appointments with a psychologist. Both the psychologist and Mr Clyde-Smith’s father, former Royal Court Commissioner Julian Clyde-Smith, had written letters of support for the defendant, the court heard.
Clyde-Smith’s supply of drugs to people he knew was, Sir John added, “almost as if he was trying to buy friendship”.
Clyde-Smith was also ordered to pay £6,800 to cover the proceeds of his supplying and £2,500 in costs, and to forfeit a mobile phone, glass pipe and set of scales.
The Jurats sitting to hear the case were Joanne Wyatt, David Robilliard, Tina Le Poidevin, Stuart Crisp and Heather Reed, the panel having been brought in from Guernsey to avoid conflicts of interest with Jersey-based Jurats.
After sentence was passed, the States police said the recovery of messages from Clyde-Smith’s phone also led to the prosecution of another man who was jailed for ten years last November. Detective Sergeant Jim McGranahan said this person had replaced Clyde-Smith’s cocaine supplier after the previous one was imprisoned.
DS McGranahan said: “We are committed to putting those responsible for supplying these drugs before the courts.”
