When police officers went to a house in Falmouth to search for drugs, the mother of the man they were looking for told them he was not at home.

But as they left they heard her shout: “Get upstairs, get upstairs now”, and then caught him when he jumped from a window.

He was 21-year-old Brandan Dean Bruce Preece, who was living at Gyllyngvase Road, Falmouth, at the time, but has since moved to London where he works as a fruit and vegetable salesman in Covent Garden.

Preece pleaded guilty to possessing 55 grams of cannabis, which Alison May, for the CPS, said was worth £540.

Ms May said the drug had been found in his bedroom, and in small bags in a bin bag in the hallway.

Preece told officers: “I smoke a lot and buy it in bulk because it is cheaper and easier to buy it that way.”

He smoked seven cigarettes a day and paid for his habit by working and with an inheritance. He had a previous conviction for a similar offence in 2012 and a reprimand for the same offence in 2009.

His solicitor Martin Pearce said he accepted that he had been caught red-handed but cannabis was now in the past for him as he had turned his life around.

Before, when he lived in Falmouth, he had been subject to peer pressure to take drugs because smoking cannabis there was habitual.

Preece was fined £75 and £105 costs and surcharge.