A DRUG supplier wept in the dock at York Crown Court as a judge allowed her to go home to the daughter she feared she would have to give up.

The Honorary Recorder of York, Judge Paul Hoffman, revealed that Jodie Leah Smithson had made plans to put her child in her grandmother's care while she served a prison sentence for conspiracy to supply heroin.

David Bradshaw, prosecuting, said the 25-year-old woman had had 13gm of heroin worth £650 in her pants when police arrested her during a drugs raid on her home in Highfield Green, Sherburn-in-Elmet.

Smithson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply

heroin in January. Judge Hoffman said that normally he would have locked Smithson up for four or five years.

But the prosecution had accepted that she had only bought the heroin that day with another person for themselves and a group of friends, all heroin users, and she was taking steps to kick her habit.

He put her on probation for three years and ordered her to carry out 100 hours' community punishment.

She wept as he added: "This is a chance you didn't dare to hope for. Don't blow it."

Updated: 10:58 Saturday, May 17, 2003