Cody Reid, 26, pleaded guilty in the Warrnambool Magistrates Court this week to trafficking crystal methamphetamine, possessing and trafficking cannabis and being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm.

He was jailed for three months. After release he will have to complete a 12-month community corrections order and must reattend court in March next year for judicial monitoring.

Magistrate Peter Mellas said the increasing incidence of ice had been highlighted in the media and by a parliamentary inquiry, but tackling the issues surrounding it was not as simple as locking people up.

He said Reid did not have an extensive criminal history but it was building. He had failed to comply with court orders in the past, fallen into drug use and then into their sale.

The magistrate said Reid had been charged with trafficking over one week and while there was no huge financial gain there was a commercial element.

“You are going to get to the stage where the only alternative for courts is longer and longer sentences,” Mr Mellas told Reid.

“You could have had a very different life but for the accident. You are angry about what happened but you need to turn that around. You need to take a deep breath and work out what you want to do with the rest of your life,” he said.

Undercover police executed a search warrant at 3.30pm on June 12 at a Wanstead Street home and found Reid holding a bolt-action rifle.

Reid immediately dropped the unloaded gun, which had been stolen in a burglary at Allansford in June 2011.

Officers also found three grams of cannabis in the home and evidence of cannabis and ice trafficking on Reid’s mobile telephone. 

During an interview with police Reid said he was the middleman between customers and his supplier and explained his drug trafficking amounted to just helping people out.

Defence counsel Amanda Chambers said Reid had been essentially homeless after he was the pillion passenger on a motorcycle, ridden by a mate, which was involved in a fatal accident in Warrnambool’s Wanstead Street on October 10, 2010.

She said her client’s life changed on that day and at the time Reid was on holidays from working in the Kalgoorlie mines.

Ms Chambers said Reid suffered a broken leg and took about 18 months to recover, during which he started self-medicating using a range of substances, which he continued to do.