A heroin user who was funding his habit by selling the drug has been jailed for 18 months.

Derek Gething turned to dealing after he lost his job as a roofer because of his addiction to the class-A drug.

But Gething, 30, was caught with dozens of wraps of the drug stored in a film canister when police raided his house last year.

Although he denied he was dealing in heroin, a judge at Swindon Crown Court did not believe him and said the wraps were for commercial supply.

The court heard that police had executed a search warrant on Thursday, July 16, last year and he dropped the container containing the drugs out of the window.

Tessa Hingston, prosecuting, said it contained 24 wraps with a total weight of 3.3 grams and a street value of about £165.

However she said it was striking that the purity of the heroin was more than 60 per cent as opposed to the normal 35 per cent for the drug on the street.

Gething, of Cranmore Avenue, Park South, pleaded guilty to possessing heroin with intent to supply and supplying cannabis.

Rob Ross, defending, said his client had a long history of drug abuse but in the early part of the decade had got a job as a roofer and funded his habit with his wages.

But as he began to use more and more of the drug he found it harder to keep his job, which is when he turned to dealing.

“He simply could not continue the way he was trying to work to subsidise his increasing heroin addiction,” he said.

“He was getting up and having to get heroin before he went to work and then needing more heroin. He couldn’t continue. The rest is history. He got hold of these drugs intending to sell them on.”

Mr Ross said there was an amateurish element to what Gething was doing as he was selling drugs at twice the normal purity.

Had he been more sophisticated he said he would have diluted them to make twice the amount of wraps and therefore a greater profit.

Since the arrest he said Gething had stopped using drugs and was at home living with his father, sister and step mother and worked cleaning windows.

Jailing him, Judge Euan Ambrose said: “The simple fact is that for that type of activity, selling class-A drugs, custodial sentences are inevitable.”

He said he had shortened the jail term to reflect the fact that he had sorted his life out after his arrest and for the low level of dealing he was engaged in.

Heroin sold on to drug users on the streets of the UK normally has a purity level of between 20 and 35 per cent.

It is usually ‘cut’ with other substances, which can include dust, baking powder, talcum powder and dishwasher powder.

Under the name diamorphine, it is a legally prescribed controlled drug in the United Kingdom.

It is available for prescription to long-term users in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany and Denmark.

Heroin is derived from the opium poppy with the world’s largest producer of these poppies being Afghanistan.