A WOMAN with long-term chronic pain became a drug dealer because she used cannabis as a painkiller, York Crown Court heard.

Rob Galley, prosecuting, said Cassey Dutton had cannabis worth nearly £1,000 in her car near Monks Cross Shopping Centre at 3.20pm.

She had smoked a joint of the drug and was driving erratically.

Text messages showed Dutton had been selling the drug for six months.

One of the messages on her phone, apparently to her drug supplier, said she couldn't get enough money to pay him because she hadn't managed to sell anything and she didn't want to sell cannabis anymore.

For the 24-year-old woman, Georgina Goring said she had had severe health problems with chronic pain since she was 10 that had required back surgery.

"At the age of 17, she discovered by smoking cannabis it eased her pain," said the defence barrister.

She had mental as well as physical health problems.

Dutton, of Nailstone Crescent, Birmingham, walked with crutches as she went into the dock.

She pleaded guilty to possession of cannabis with intent to supply on the basis that her drug supplier persuaded her to turn drug dealer herself to her friends.

"The nonsense peddled in many instances of cannabis not affecting people is just that," Judge Simon Hickey told her. "It causes mental instability, it causes crime, it causes economic damage. It should not be peddled, and this was the strongest form of cannabis (in Dutton's car)."

He told her not to take cannabis for any reason, including as pain relief.

He also gave her a 12-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months on condition she does 15 days' rehabilitative activities and a 12-week nightly curfew.

Miss Goring said Dutton was remorseful for her actions.

Mr Galley said a passer-by called police on seeing Dutton driving erratically and smelling cannabis coming from her car on Monks Cross Drive on July 12, 2017.

There were then problems getting access to her phone date and analysing it which delayed the court case.