A judge and police paid tribute to a mother who turned her young drug dealer son in, knowing he would be jailed.

Mark Richard Medd, aged 18, was today starting a 12-month jail sentence after he "went into business" as a wholesale cannabis dealer.

He had nearly £3,000 worth of the drug and possessing scales when police arrested him, York Crown Court heard.

Just three months earlier he had escaped a spell behind bars when York justices sentenced him for possessing cannabis with intent.

But when his mother Barbara realised that he was still breaking the law, she went to the police in a bid to stop him, his counsel David Bradshaw said. She and his father, David, were in court to see him led in handcuffs from the dock to the cells.

"My heart goes out to them," Recorder Martin Bethel QC said.

He told Medd: "I regard the acts of your parents to take the public spirited view they did to report you, because you would not respond to their guidance in any other way, as behaviour perfectly proper and in the public interest.

"Your acts have brought about a personal tragedy, not just for you, for it could be said you deserve the consequences of your action, but for your parents who sit behind you as I look at you in the dock." He added: "It is plain that you were a wholesaler of these drugs. The six packages were going to go to friends of yours who in turn were going to distribute it at a lower level," the judge said. "You had gone into business as a drug dealer."

He had read a letter from his parents and a probation officer's report which said Medd now fully appreciated the enormity of what he had done.

Mr Bradshaw said Medd welcomed the support his parents were giving him during his court ordeal.

Medd, of Radley Court, Strensall, pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis worth £2,852 with intent to supply.

The court heard that Medd had planned to use his drugs profits to go on holiday and had now stopped using cannabis himself.

After the case, Sgt Tim Bright of Strensall police said the sentence was a warning to others and that drug taking and selling by teenagers was a growing problem.

If more parents took the "difficult decision" Medd's parents had taken, it would go a long way to combating the drug problem among the city's youth.

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