By Daily Telegraph Reporter Last Updated: 2:00am BST 10/10/2007 <TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>A teaching assistant at a village school who supplied cannabis to her two children so they did not have to buy the drug from street dealers has been spared a jail sentence. <TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=238 align=right border=0 hspace="0"><TBODY><TR><TD width=8 rowSpan=2> </TD><TD width=230><CENTER></CENTER></TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption><CENTER>Nicola Cooper admitted smoking cannabis herself since the age of 18 </CENTER></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Nicola Cooper, 43, told police she wanted to prevent her teenagers being exposed to dealers and getting involved in crime. She made the admission after police found 116 gms of cannabis resin worth around £200 at her home in Ixworth, near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. Cooper quit her job as a support assistant at Barrow primary school, near Bury St Edmunds, after being charged with supplying cannabis. A court was told that she gave the drug to her daughter when she was aged 16 and her son 18. She said she gave it to them occasionally after discovering that they had started smoking the drug. Cooper, who admitted smoking cannabis herself since the age of 18, showed police the drugs in her home on June 15. She admitted possessing the drug with intent to supply and offering to supply it. She was ordered to do 200 hours community work and pay £60 costs. District Judge David Cooper said he had considered giving Cooper a suspended jail sentence, but had chosen a community penalty instead because of her good character. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Well dam! They didnt crucify her. kudos to the judge. IF sheld been in the USA? lol....sheld be lookin down the religous right wing, the dea, atf, and untold childrens helpers orgs would be calling for her head. And the kids would be in jail for smokin to. i luv usa.
It's good that they had the sense not to treat her like just another drug-selling, society-ruining criminal. I think it's good that she wanted to protect her kids from any possible trouble with having to buy from people that could be undercover cops, looking to rip them off, etc. I don't, however, entirely agree with giving them marijuana. A similar thing happened here a few years back: woman didn't want her kids dealing with the kinds of low lifes that can sometimes be involved with grass, so she supllied them with it instead. Only problem was that she was being overprotective: her kids were 14 and didn't smoke. The only reason she had for doing all this was because they came home talking about it after a D.A.R.E. class, so their mother took it the wrong way. She basically made them smoke for for no reason. That wasn't learned until some time after the original incident.
It brings a tear to my eye knowing that the world is starting to recognize the difference between law and good. This is a step in the right direction. And damn it if I could plus rep her I would.
Yea. The lawmakers in this fuckin country woulda wanted to give her the chair or life in prison. Fuckin government bullshit.