A DRUG-user caught with heroin with a street value of £4,500 has received a suspended prison sentence after he convinced a judge he wants to break his long-term habit.

Matthew Peter Mortimer spent a social security tribunal payout on buying three one-ounce lumps of the Class A drug for £1,400, York Crown Court heard.

Laurie Scott, prosecuting, said police caught him with the drugs on the A64 on March 31.

A police expert calculated that if broken up into street deals, the 81.7g of heroin would sell for £4,540.

Mortimer, 38, of Windmill Rise, Tadcaster, pleaded guilty to possessing heroin with intent to supply half of it to six of his friends.

The rest he intended to take himself. He has been addicted to heroin for 22 years, since he was 16.

In a letter, Mortimer told Recorder Jamie Hill QC: “I realise I deserve and will receive a custodial sentence.

“I cannot remember a time when I didn’t need heroin to do the things normal people do all the time,” he wrote.

“I don’t know why I have chosen this life and will never understand why. “I have thrown everything away through drugs.

“I realise something has to change. I want it to change. If I don’t change my life, I will be dead before 40.”

He said he had health problems that put him in hospital twice a year.

He was given a 15-month prison sentence suspended for two years on condition he did a high-intensity drug rehabilitation programme and 12 months’ supervision.

Recorder Jamie Hill QC said: “As you know from your long and bitter experience, heroin brings misery to everyone it touches.”

He said Mortimer had continued that misery for his friends by volunteering to buy them heroin and had benefited financially because he got his heroin at a wholesale price instead of at street retail prices.

But he added: “I do genuinely believe that you are at a stage in your life when you are motivated to change.”

His mother also sent the judge a letter saying she was standing by her son and drug rehabilitation organisation North Yorkshire Horizons also sent a letter.