For offences of cultivating cannabis with intent to sell or supply, an offender who is a 'hired hand' — even one at the upper echelon of a sophisticated commercial enterprise — cannot be sentenced on the basis that the offending falls within or extremely close to the worst category of the offence where there is no finding that the offender was a principal who directed the enterprise and shared in its profits. The worst category of drug offending will generally involve those at the top of the hierarchy of a significant drug-dealing operation. A sentence of 7 years' imprisonment (on a maximum of 10 years) for a single count involving 7,567 cannabis plants was manifestly excessive where the offender was a hired hand; 6 years was substituted.
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