A judge has blasted an ‘idiot’ teenage drug dealer after he failed to take a chance at avoiding jail.

Cameron Johnson, of Nuttall Street, Accrington, pleaded guilty last month to his part in a crack cocaine and heroin street dealing operation.

The 19-year-old’s sentence was adjourned so a pre-sentence report (PSR) could be prepared for the judge to consider a sentence other than custody.

However, Burnley Crown Court heard how the Accrington and Rossendale College student missed an appointment with the probation service while on remand and instead chose to receive a ‘social visit’.

Judge Beverley Lunt said he had ‘made his choice’ and he will ‘have to go to prison’.

She told the court: “He’s an idiot. How dare he prefer a social visit! Why would I bother then?

“Talk about making bad decisions, it gets worse and worse. I wanted a PSR to see what else I can do. Nothing now because he didn’t co-operate. There you go. He will have to go to prison won’t he? That’s his choice.”

Johnson pleaded guilty to possessing crack cocaine and heroin with intent to supply and was sent to a young offenders institute for two years.

The court previously heard how the teenager was ‘instructed’ to bag up the drugs and keep checklists while living at a house on College Street in Accrington to pay off a rent debt.

Officers accidentally stumbled across the drugs and paraphernalia when they attended the property ‘in relation to completely separate matter’ in January 2016.

In his bedroom they found over 30 wraps of brown and white powder, a bag of yellow rocks, two grinders in a metal tin, £270 cash, a mobile phone and ‘paper with calculations on them’.

Ffion Tomos, defending, said the motoring mechanics student ‘accepts a custodial sentence is inevitable’.

She told the court that his decision to miss the probation service appointment is ‘perhaps an indication of how immature he is’.

Sentencing, Judge Lunt said: “I’m entirely of the view that when you were confronted with this option of paying off debts by assisting in the dealing of two class A drugs you did see it as the lesser of two evils without understanding how much trouble you were in.

"You were not selling it to people yourself but you were packaging it and taking orders. There’s no PSR and there must be a custodial sentence.”