A COUNCIL worker was last night starting a 12-month jail sentence for dealing drugs to his friends.

Christopher Teasdale, 24, was caught with 60 ecstasy tablets and three wraps of heroin when police raided his home in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, last year.

He told officers he was a heroin addict and the wraps were for him, while he had been selling the tablets to friends and associates for £2 - a 50p profit on what he had paid a dealer.

Teasdale's barrister Chris Baker told Teesside Crown Court yesterday: "He is clearly nowhere near the top of scale when it comes to drug dealing.

"It is the lower end with pretty poor profit margins, given the risk."

Teasdale, of Brewer Street, admitted supplying ecstasy between September 13 and October 15, possessing ecstasy with intent to supply on October 15, and possessing heroin on October 15.

Mr Baker urged the judge to spare his client jail, and give him credit for his guilty pleas and his full and frank admissions to the police - including the fact that he had been dealing the previous month.

But the Recorder of Middlesbrough, Judge Peter Fox, QC, said: "It would be sending out the wrong message entirely to low-level class A drug peddlars like you to think you just get probation - not so."