Scott Perkins: Singleton Heights mine worker slammed for ecstasy use
A magistrate has given a drill operator a severe dressing down after he was caught at the races with ecstasy tablets. He was slammed for potentially putting lives at risk.
Central Sydney
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A coal mine drill operator who confessed to a decade of drug use despite the precarious nature of his profession was sentenced for supplying ecstasy to punters at the Everest carnival at Royal Randwick.
Scott Perkins, 34, entered an early guilty plea following his detection by drug dogs at the general admin bar on Level 3 of the Queen Elizabeth Grandstand on October 19.
However, he maintained at Waverley Local Court on Wednesday that the 12.5g of ecstasy tablets he was found with were for personal use and the $5202 cash he was carrying was due to his well paid mining job.
Perkins’ defence focused on the long shifts and isolation of his job which required him to travel half a kilometre underground and up to 10 more kilometres to the coal face.
Magistrate Allison Hawkins was aghast.
“He does this while having a drug problem?” she said.
“I’ve been involved in mining prosecutions where people have lost their lives.
“You work in a dangerous job underground, you know the consequences of what can go wrong and you are putting your colleagues’ lives at risk.”
The defence said Perkins, a former bricklayer who has never appeared before a Magistrate before, took drugs monthly and never while at work.
He has been voluntarily attending a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program since his arrest.
The Singleton Heights man was sentenced to 80 hours of community service and 18 months Intensive Community Order on charges of supply a prohibited drug and dealing with the proceeds of crime.