A FAILED businessman has been jailed after he took up drug dealing to pay for his own cocaine habit.

Exeter Crown Court last week heard that Laurence Lodge was found with almost £70,000 worth of drugs and £32,000 in cash when police raided his home in Okehampton.

Lodge, aged 57, of St John's Road, Okehampton, admitted six counts of possession with intent to supply and one of possessing criminal property and was jailed for four and a half years by Judge Graham Cottle.

He told him: 'I am prepared to accept there was somebody else in the background higher up the chain to whose tune you were dancing.'

Gordon Richings, prosecuting, said Lodge's home was raided in February 2014 and a large amount of drugs and drug dealing paraphernalia was seized, along with hash cakes, a cash book, and a list of clients.

The £32,000 had been counted into £1,000 bundles and the main drug discoveries were 217 grams of cocaine, worth up £10,000, 3,349 ecstasy tablets, worth up to £10 each, and 1.74 kilograms of cannabis resin worth over £5,000.

He had smaller amounts of crystal ecstasy, skunk cannabis and a dance drug known as 2CB. The total value was estimated at £69,467.16.

Mr Richings said: 'The police drugs intelligence officer suggests he was a significant player in a network and chain of drug dealing. His part was storing, weighing and bagging up and he was a main contact between higher level drug suppliers and street dealers.'

Mr Rupert Taylor, defending, said Lodge developed a cocaine habit after being divorced and the closure of a business which he had run for some years.

He said he was acting as a warehouseman rather than a dealer and was keeping both the drugs and the cash for others further up the chain.

He said: 'He did it because he was in a desperate position but he accepts there is no-one to blame but himself.

'The values put on the drugs by the police were speculative and his lifestyle was not that which you would expect from a large scale drug dealer. There were no cars and no luxuries.'