Amber Smith: Launceston ex-ice addict turns life around, court hears

A young Tasmanian woman has reconnected with her family and is now living with her sister and working towards her future after her ice addiction led to a spree of offending, a court has heard.

A Tasmanian woman formerly hopelessly addicted to methamphetamine and in a long-term relationship with the user who introduced her to the drug has turned her life around, a court has heard.

Invermay woman Amber Lee Smith, 23, pleaded guilty in Launceston Magistrates Court on Tuesday to 14 traffic and drug offences and was sentenced.

Her offending, most seriously two counts of driving with a prescribed drug present in her oral fluid and one each of possessing and using methamphetamine, occurred between August 9, 2019 and March 1, 2021.

The current offences were committed amid a “huge amount” of other offending, Magistrate Sharon Cure told the court.

On April 8 last year, Smith was sentenced to 105 hours’ community service and a suspended six-week jail term for offending including evading police.

Defence lawyer Hannah Goss told the court her client was mostly 21 years’ old at the commission of the current offences.

Invermay woman Amber Lee Smith, 23. Picture: Facebook

At the time, she was in a five-year relationship with a “person known to this court (who) introduced her to illicit substances”.

“She became withdrawn from her family or withdrew from them,” Ms Goss said.

It had only been since the latest sentence (April 2021) and the ending of the toxic relationship that Smith had become reconciled with her family, Ms Goss told the court.

Smith was currently living with her sister – who was supporting her in court – in a “stable” living arrangement.

She was in a “difficult financial situation” as she had been unable to obtain a tax file number due to her difficulties in reading and writing, thereby being also unable to access government benefits.

Her sister was helping rectify this, Ms Goss said.

Ms Cure fined Smith $600, ordered she pay court costs and levies of $365.60, and disqualified her licence – Smith is unlicensed anyway – for three months.