Kai Fairbrace appeared in the Royal Court on Friday, having earlier pleaded guilty to assaulting a doorman outside the Havana nightclub on 4 December.
He was arrested and taken to Police Headquarters, where officers found 5g of ecstasy powder split into 1g wraps in a pocket.
Fairbrace admitted one charge of common assault and one of intending to supply Class A drugs.
Setting out the facts, Crown Advocate Richard Pedley said: “Regarding the assault, the defendant told officers that he could not recall punching [the doorman] and that the people he was seen pushing and shoving were friends with whom he was play-fighting.
“However, when shown the CCTV of the incident he accepted that he was the person throwing the punch at the doorman.
“As for the powder, the defendant accepted that it was MDMA, but stated that it was ’2.5g MDMA and 2.5g other stuff’ which he clarified was ‘creatine’.”
Although the Crown maintained that Fairbrace intended to sell all 5g that night in order to fund his evening, the Court accepted the 18-year-old’s version of events: that he intended to sell 3g and use 2g himself.
The total street value of the drugs was £400 – £500.
Advocate Pedley added that Fairbrace had 32 previous convictions for possessing controlled substances, public order offences and offences against the person.
He said, by virtue of his guilty pleas for the assault and intent to supply, Fairbrace had been in breach of a nine-month probation order imposed by the Magistrate’s Court a month earlier for fighting and resisting arrest.
Defending, Advocate James Bell said that Fairbrace had had a troubled childhood, including a four-year period in care.
He argued that, with his client aware that he was facing a custodial sentence, the “penny had dropped” and it had been “a significant wake-up call”.
Advocate Bell said Fairbrace had now realised that not engaging with orders in the past had been a mistake and he was now willing to work with probation officers and other agencies trying to help him.
He said: “Kai does not yet want to open up about certain matters from his past and there is more work that needs to be done.
“The right response now is to give him another chance and for agencies to look at their own work and try even harder to help someone like Kai”.
The Advocate urged the Court to “apply the spirit” of recent legislation and Government strategies, including the Children and Young People Law, which the States Assembly approved this week.
The Court – Deputy Bailiff Robert MacRae, sitting with Jurats Jane Ronge and Karen Le Cornu – said that reports from probation officers, which described Fairbrace’s “indifferent” approach to court orders and his “unreasonable behaviour and non-attendance” at sessions, made youth detention inevitable.
Mr MacRae said: “We hope you will take up the opportunity of the courses and assistance available to you in youth detention and hope that, when you come out on licence after your release, you have turned over a new leaf in the way you have said.”