A SCOTS drug trafficker caught with amphetamine worth more than £300,000 on the streets when cops spotted him carrying heavy shopping bags was jailed for 40 months.

At the High Court in Glasgow judge Craig Scott QC told 32-year-old Ross McMullan: “Those – like you - who allow their homes to be used to store drugs are a significant cog in the chain of distribution.”

He added that, but for McMullan’s early guilty plea, he would have jailed him for five years.

The court heard that police had initially seen the 32-year-old, from Lanarkshire, on January 9 this year outside the house in Townhead Gardens carrying the weighted bags from a vehicle into the common stairwell.

Officers later searched Ross McMullan’s then home in Whitburn and found 30 and a half kilos of the drug in tubs inside supermarket “bag for life” carriers.

Prosecutor Ian Wallace said he was later spotted at another location in Whitburn and detained and taken to Livingston police station.

Officers then carried out a search at his home and found the drugs inside the shopping bags.

The prosecutor said that such an amount of amphetamine would be destined to be divided up for onward supply.

McMullan, a fencer, was interviewed by police and said that he had been moving furniture that day. He said: “I wasn’t supplying nobody.”

McMullan, from Harthill, Lanarkshire, admitted being concerned in the supply of amphetamine at 59 Townhead Gardens, Whitburn, on January 9.

The court heard that although he had a criminal record he didn’t have previous convictions for drugs and had never served a jail sentence.

Defence solicitor advocate Ewen Roy said: “Mr McMullan has no history of drug-related offending. He deeply regrets the commission of this offence and does seem to be genuinely remoresful.”