THE drugs were different and the quantities were on opposite ends of the scale, but there were a lot of similarities between Les Mason's sentence hearing last week and the one he faced in 2017 for supplying 58 grams of cocaine.
Both times Mason took the stand and said he was done with drugs and drug supply.
Both times he said he had never made any money from the enterprise.
Both times he told the judge they would never see him in a court again.
And both times he said he planned to do volunteer work and youth mentoring.
"I think I have a lot to offer," Mason said during a sentence hearing in Newcastle District Court in March, 2017, and again in the same court last week.
"I've reached a conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that he will re-offend in relation to this type of offending," Judge Roy Ellis said in March, 2017, before sentencing Mason to a two-year intensive corrections order (ICO) instead of jail.
Mason loaded the drug into the boot of his car and drove it a short distance to a shopping centre where he supplied it to an unknown man. Police say the substance was then driven to Sydney and delivered to a dealer who supplies large quantities of GHB.
A controlled substance, Butanediol is legitimately used as a cleaning agent but when it is ingested by users their livers turn the Butanediol into GHB, an illicit and potentially deadly recreational drug. Mason said he had the drug in his car for "max 10 minutes" and he was motivated by a desperation for some "easy money".
He said he was to be paid between $12,000 and $14,000. Just like that, with a police strike force watching, Mason had breached his ICO, sealed his fate and wasted the chance he had been given.
On Thursday, after pleading guilty to supplying more than 12 times the threshold for a large commercial quantity of Butanediol, a charge which carries a maximum of life imprisonment, Mason was jailed for a maximum of six years, with a non-parole period of three years and three months.
