PARENTS wept yesterday as their son was jailed for drug dealing.

Dale Calow's retired parents travelled from Spain to support him after he was arrested for selling cocaine from his Darlington home.

Groups of young women were among the callers who visited the 27-year-old's house as police kept watch, said Peter Sabiston, prosecuting.

They seized one man who had five deals of cocaine, which he said Calow had sold him for £100, Teesside Crown Court was told.

The police saw 11 visitors in two hours.

Calow visited a petrol station, helping himself to free supplies of plastic gloves. He cut off the finger ends, which he packed with the Class A powder.

When the police raided the house in Major Street, Darlington, after a week's surveillance, they found a stack of fingerless gloves, cocaine, a ball-bearing gun, electronic scales, and traces of cocaine in the kitchen and dining room.

There were also two mobile phones, from which they recovered messages from Calow to his supplier listing how much money he owed.

When Calow was charged on September 20 last year, he replied: "I am happy. I can give an explanation in court."

Paul Cleasby, mitigating, said that, after a relationship breakdown, Calow was diagnosed with skin cancer and became involved with the wrong crowd.

He was persuaded to let his home be used for dividing up cocaine paid for on a shared basis.

Mr Cleasby added: "Then he became involved in a situation which he did not see coming."

Calow had no previous convictions and, since his arrest last July, he had not been in trouble.

Mr Cleasby said: "He is deeply upset for himself but more so for his parents who he feels he has brought emotional pain and difficulties."

Judge George Moorhouse told Calow that he took into account the fact that he was a young man from a good home, a respectable family and he had never been in trouble before.

But the judge added: "The message has to go out loud and clear to others that people who peddle drugs lose their liberty."

Calow, now of Cheltenham Court, Middleton St George, was jailed for two years after he pleaded guilty to supplying cocaine between 8 June and 1 July last year.