Serial drug dealer Alex Urquhart jailed for trafficking commercial quantities of ice, GHB-mirror drug

A Geelong drug dealer who lived a “gangster lifestyle” will spend a hefty stretch behind bars after being busted with 30kg of a popular party drug and $114,000 in cash.

Alex Urquhart. Picture: Facebook.

A Geelong drug dealer who lived a “gangster lifestyle” will spend a hefty stretch behind bars after being busted with 30kg of a popular party drug and $114,000 in cash.

Alex Urquhart, appeared in the County Court in Melbourne on Monday and was jailed by Judge Marcus Dempsey on counts of trafficking commercial quantities of both 1,4 butanediol and ice, along with charges of dealing with the suspected proceeds of crime and numerous weapons offences.

Judge Dempsey told the court Urquhart was a “persistent trafficker of drugs, possessor of weapons and acquirer of stolen goods” as he jailed him for a minimum of five and a half-years.

An image of Urquhart found on his phone. Picture released by the County Court of Victoria.

“You appear to have a real affinity with, or attraction to, the criminality you engage in, which gives me little comfort regarding your capacity to change,” Judge Dempsey said.

The court heard Urquhart had spent much of his 20s behind bars, and Judge Dempsey told Urquhart he will now spend a “significant period of (his) 30s incarcerated”.

After being nabbed in Geelong West while driving drug-affected on June 1, 2022, Urquhart’s Moolap unit was raided.

Between the car and the unit, police found a stolen Volkswagen, weapons, $114,000 in cash, more than 30kg of GHB-mirror drug 1,4 butanediol – 15 times the threshold for a commercial quantity – along with steroids, more than 100g of ice, and a small amount of heroin.

Judge Dempsey told the court Urquhart’s prospects for reform were “worse than guarded”.

“No less than five terms of imprisonment have failed to adequately deter you,” he told Urquhart.

However, Judge Dempsey said Urquhart’s prospects were “not extinguished”, and told the court Urquhart had displayed “encouraging signs” during his latest stint behind bars.

The court heard Urquhart, who hasn’t worked in over a decade, was bullied at school and began drinking at a “very young age”.

Urquhart has been diagnosed with ADHD and complex-post-traumatic-stress-disorder.

He was found by a psychologist to be “socially and emotionally immature” the court heard.

The court heard once Urquhart began using drugs he went “all-in” and inevitably fell back into the “selling of drugs and the trappings of life outside the law”.

Urquhart paid $38,000 cash for a Mercedes in 2021 in between prison sentences and found guns to be “irresistible” and an “indispensable object” in completing his persona, Judge Dempsey said.

Urquhart was jailed for a maximum of seven years and four months. He has already served 803 days in custody, reckoned as time served.

Originally published as Serial drug dealer Alex Urquhart jailed for trafficking commercial quantities of ice, GHB-mirror drug