Megan Louise Ronan had dealt meth at street level for 12 months

The 49-year-old mother of four will spend at least the next nine months behind bars for dealing meth across Toowoomba.

Megan Louise Ronan was jailed for three years by the Toowoomba Supreme Court on December 15, 2021, for trafficking meth.

A mother of four who was introduced to drugs and drug dealing by her partner has been jailed for trafficking methylamphetamine in Toowoomba.

Megan Louise Ronan and her partner Brigham Michael Taylor, 42, had been detected by a police operation targeting drug trafficking in the Toowoomba area, the city’s Supreme Court heard.

Taylor, who was jailed for four years, to be suspended after having served 12 months in jail, when sentenced by the same court in September, wrote a letter to the court in support of Ronan saying it had been his drug business and lessening his wife’s involvement.

However, Justice Martin Burns said he accepted Taylor had introduced her to the drug world, but that they each had separate drug selling businesses, though he accepted Taylor’s was a larger enterprise than Ronan’s.

Crown prosecutor Ellen Fletcher told the court Ronan had trafficked methylamphetamines around Toowoomba for almost a year from May 18, 2018, to May 2, 2019.

The 49-year-old mother of four had a customer base of about 33 though she had a regular customer base of about 10, she said.

Ronan dealt drugs in various quantities up to a “ball” (3.5g) and her trafficking could be considered to have been at street level, she said.

When sentenced in September, the court heard Taylor had a customer base of about 60.

Ms Fletcher said the Crown accepted Ronan had tried to stop her partner from dealing drugs, and she had stopped trafficking about five months before police arrested her.

She pleaded guilty to trafficking meth.

Her barrister Shane MacDonald said his client had been working two jobs and attending Lives Lived Well to address her drug issues and get her life back on track.

Should she be jailed, her four children would be cared for by their grandmother, he said.

Justice Burns noted Ronan had a good work history until she got into drugs, and that since August 2020 she had stayed away from drugs.

Noting the range of penalty for such offending was three to five years in jail, Justice Burns sentenced Ronan to three years in jail.

But he ordered Ronan be released on parole on September 15, 2022, after she had served nine months of the term.