The characterisation of an offender's criminal conduct as a single multi-faceted course of conduct driven by drug use, being an explanation relying on a 'common underlying condition', does not necessarily diminish the criminality involved by itself, though it may operate upon sentencing considerations. The Mill v The Queen approach applies where an offender is sentenced by different judges for offences committed in the same period: the proper approach is to ask what would likely have been the effective head sentence if all offences had been committed in one jurisdiction and sentenced at one time.
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