Two men have been jailed after police caught them with more than £8,000 worth of crack cocaine.

Martin Comer, 46, of Ninfield Road, Bexhill, received a four-and-a-half year sentence.

James Chapman, 41, a traveller who lives at Fair Lane Travellers' Site at Robertsbridge, was jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Both men admitted having crack cocaine with intent to supply the drug, at Lewes Crown Court.

The court heard Comer, who had a crack cocaine habit at the time, said he agreed to collect the drug to pay off a debt to his dealers and Chapman agreed to drive him as a favour.

Nicholas Hall, prosecuting, told the court the two men had been under surveillance by the Sussex Police Drug Unit for two days before their arrest in May last year.

They were followed from Hastings as Chapman drove his Mercedes car to Lewisham, in south London, with Comer as his passenger.

In London they parked in a residential street and waited for nearly an hour until a third man got into the back of the car and left again a minute later.

The Mercedes headed back to Hastings. Police stopped the car at a pub car park at Flimwell, near Robertsbridge, where the drug was found in Comer's jacket pocket.

Mr Hall said both men had previous convictions and had been to prison in the past. But neither of them had any record of drug offences.

Sentencing the two men, Judge Charles Kemp said: "This particular pernicious and evil drug, once it leaves you, can and very often does, come into the hands of young and vulnerable people whose lives are often blighted, sometimes permanently ruined and sometimes prematurely ended."

After the hearing Detective Constable Nigel Waller said the arrest of the two men followed a large drugs operation in the area.

He said: "This was one of many on-going operations to crack down on the importation of crack cocaine."