A SUSPENDED jail term has been handed to a 21-year-old woman who was involved in illegally supplying the psychoactive substance nitrous oxide.

Professional chef Kira Hodgson was caught with incriminating evidence when police stopped the car she was travelling in with others in Cumbria on June 20 last year, Carlisle’s Rickergate court heard.

She admitted possessing the Class C drug with intent to supply, as well as illegally possessing a bladed article and cannabis.

Prosecutor George Shelley outlined the facts.

He said that when police searched the defendant’s car they found six 640g canisters of nitrous oxide, and empty boxes bearing a nitrous oxide brand name.

There was also £160 in cash, multiple boxes of balloons, cable ties and a Stanley knife. At the defendant’s home, police found more incriminating evidence – a further 13 640g canisters of nitrous oxide and three empty cannister boxes.

On the defendant’s phone there were “multiple photos” of people inhaling from balloons, as well as video clips of the same activity.

Chris Toms, defending, said an immediate jail sentence for the offence would serve no useful purpose.

“This is someone who has made a silly mistake,” he said. “There is a tone to it of someone being led astray by those around her.

“She was not in a position to obtain supplies of these things if they had not been offered to her. As for the knife issue, it was something she used in her work. It had been left in the car’s glove compartment.”

The lawyer agreed with Judge John Temperley that the defendant agreed to supply the nitrous oxide - known also as 'laughing gas' - to pay off a drugs debt.

Mr Toms added: “She’d got herself into a bit of a mess and took the easy way out. There was easy money offered to her to get out of a situation and she took it.

"She is actually a diligent, hard-working person. She hasn’t troubled the [courts] system before and she won’t trouble it again.”

The court heard that since the offence, Hodgson had moved to a location in Scotland but she was now about to take up a new job at a hotel in the south of the country.

District Judge Temperley said he accepted that claim that the defendant committed the offence during a period when she “went off the rails” but she had now moved on with her life and had a new partner.

He expressed a 'slight concern' over the photos found on her phone of people using the illegal drug, though Mr Toms said this was motivated by her desire to be 'the life and soul of the party'.

The judge imposed six months jail, suspended for a year. As punishment, Hodgson must perform 200 hours of unpaid work. She must also pay £85 costs and a £154 victim surcharge.

(Image: Newsquest)

Court records show the defendant to be of no fixed address.

* Government figures show that between 2001 and 2020, there were 56 registered deaths which involved nitrous oxide in England and Wales.

In official guidance, a government website states: "We have been growing increasingly concerned about the misuse of nitrous oxide and its impact on society. 

"Heavy nitrous oxide use can result in serious health harms such as neurological damage and even death due to the risk of falling unconscious and or suffocating from the lack of oxygen. It is illegal to possess if nitrous oxide if it is, or is likely to be, wrongfully inhaled."