A community worker has been jailed after a sharp-nosed policewoman sniffed out his home grown cannabis farm.
Adrian Mullins grew more than £100,000 worth of skunk cannabis before neighbours complained about the appalling smell of the drugs and police sniffed him out.
The care worker and community volunteer started growing the drug for his own use after suffering a painful back injury but went on to sell it to friends.
By the time he was raided by police last year he had paid £15,000 cash into two bank accounts, Exeter Crown Court was told.
Mullins, 40, of John Street, Tiverton, admitted production of cannabis, possession with intent to supply and eight counts of money laundering and was jailed for 15 months.
Recorder Mr John Williams told him: "You grew this cannabis over three and a half years with a potential yield of something like £30,000 a year.
"This matured into a successful enterprise which made a profit and but for the pervasive smell outside your home it may have continued.
"If it could be smelled outside, one wonders what the situation was for your wife and children inside. You are a man of good character and it is 1,000 pities that you have lost that good character.
"You are an essentially decent man who has unfortunately got involved in this criminal activity."
Jonathan Barnes, prosecuting, said: "The defendant and his wife were living at a house in Tiverton and in May last year the police were alerted to a smell of cannabis in the area.
"A woman police constable was given the task of following her nose and it led her to Mullins' home where she knocked on the door. She said she could smell drugs and he replied that it was all upstairs."
Mr Barnes said there were growing rooms in the attic and around a kilo of cannabis drying on a clothes rack or stored on the floor nearby. An expert estimated the operation had been producing £32,000 worth of skunk a year in four harvests.
Checks on Mullins' phone showed he had been dealing since 2008 and financial investigators found unexplained cash deposits of £6,560 in his HSBC account and £8,546 in a joint account at the Nationwide.
Jason Beal, defending, said Mullins had a responsible job caring for others but had been suspended because of the allegations and was likely to lose it.
He said Mullins started growing for his own use when he was taking cannabis to alleviate back pain because he did not like buying it on the black market.
Mr Beal said: "He thought he was removing himself from the criminal hinterland by growing rather than buying drugs without realising he was entering that hinterland himself."
Since his arrest he has sought help from Narcotics Anonymous for his own use of cannabis.
Mullins will now face further proceedings to seize his assets under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
