A LAKE Macquarie woman has been jailed for a maximum five and a half years after she was charged when police found dozens of bottles of drug manufacturing chemicals below the false bottom of a wheelie bin during a raid.
Judge Peter Whitford on Thursday told Newcastle District Court he was satisfied that Amanda Long was not running the supply operation connected to the chemicals, but that she was acting out of a combination of fear and a need to feed her significant drug addiction.
Judge Whitford said Long's then-partner Michael Glynatsis - who pleaded guilty to a string of related charges earlier this year and will be sentenced in July - was the "sole principle of the enterprise", and that Long was depending on him to feed her drug habit.
He said Long was subject to "controlling and abusive" behaviour, and she was partially motivated by fear.
"A combination of the addiction and the controlling nature of the relationship made Ms Long extremely vulnerable, in my assessment, to a form of psychological duress which operated in securing her involvement in the activities in which she participated," Judge Whitford said when handing down the sentence.
"I am not suggesting her will was entirely overborne. She had some agency and plainly made choices. But her capacity for choice I assess as having been substantially compromised by her circumstances."
Police charged Long and Glynatsis with several drug supply counts after a search at a Speers Point home in late 2022 uncovered 55 bottles containing almost 27 litres of an industrial chemical used as an alternative to the deadly party drug GHB underneath a false bottom in a wheelie bin.
The chemical - 1,4-Butaneidiol - had a street value of $220,000, police said.
Investigators also found text messages that showed Long had supplied another 11 litres of 1,4-Butaneidol over the previous three months.
The messages also showed that Long supplied 180 grams of methamphetamine during the same period.
Long was on bail for those charges when she was arrested again in April 2023 for continuing to source methamphetamine and 1,4-Butanedoil.
She pleaded guilty to seven drug supply charges in Newcastle Local Court late last year.
Judge Whitford said Long could not be described as a partner in the drug supply operation, rather an assistant.
"Domestic abuse and violence and coercive control are properly the subject of substantial community attention and concern at the present time," he said.
"The capacity for abusive and controlling behaviour to compel an individual's participation in criminal activity, especially criminal activity as serious as the present, may well be an insidious feature of domestic abuse which warrants some particular attention.
"The facts surrounding the present offending seem to me to present an example of precisely that consequence of abuse."
Judge Whitford backdated Long's jail term to account for the time she has spent in custody, which means she will be first eligible for parole in January, 2026.
