BRANTFORD – Judges keep good records, Justice Robert Gee noted as he sent a fentanyl dealer to prison again.
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“This is a ‘kiss’ for you again,” Gee told 36-year-olld Jeremy S. Robinson. “It was fentanyl on the last go-round, as well. I looked it up in my notes.”
In 2019, Gee sentenced Robinson to a three-year prison term and warned him that fentanyl drug dealers inevitably get caught or overdose and die.
The judge urged Robinson to get his addiction under control while in prison and the man apparently took the warning to heart, said his lawyer. He completed his Grade 12 certificate and did well on parole, getting a job, joining a union and saving money.
But after being kicked out of his low-rent apartment, Robinson spiralled down, first staying in hotels, then becoming homeless and losing his job.
Robinson pleaded guilty to assault and possession of fentanyl for trafficking.
The assault charge related to him getting in a long wrestling match with a Freshco security guard after he was stopped for shoplifting from the grocery store last June.
Then in September, a police officer and two special constables saw Robinson handing drugs to others on a bench on Dalhousie Street and noted the men seemed to be using the drugs in the open.
Robinson had a glass crack pipe in one hand and a small torch in the other when he was arrested.
Police found 20.5 grams of fentanyl, dilaudid pills, a small amount of methamphetamine and a weigh scale when he was searched.
Fentanyl is an oft-deadly synthetic opioid that can be up to 100 times more potent than morphine. It’s been implicated in a slew of fatal overdoses across Southwestern Ontario, including several that resulted in homicide charges against the drug dealer.
“As long as you stay connected to drugs you’ll end up back in the penitentiary or you’ll overdose and die,” warned the judge. “No one says it’s easy to quit but no one says you can’t do it, either.”
The judge agreed to the joint submission for a total of three years, less time served calculated at 187 days.