A local restaurateur who started selling cocaine to pay for his own drug habit is facing 18 months behind bars.

Tai Pang Nipp pleaded guilty to one count of possession for the purposes of trafficking Friday, changing his original plea of not guilty and abandoning his quest to have the evidence against him thrown out.

Nipp was arrested by Whitehorse RCMP in March 2010, after police spied him driving a car which had been involved in a previous drug deal.

They followed Nipp and watched as he and another vehicle met briefly in the empty parking lot of the McCrae gas bar, and appeared to exchange something through Nipp's window.

The car was the same one driven by Yao Lin Guan, a former employee of Nipp's who was also caught mid-deal by the police.

After he was found guilty of selling cocaine, Guan told Yukon Supreme Court he had come to Whitehorse to work at a Chinese restaurant but soon started selling drugs as well.

The sight of two cars, one of which was involved in another known drug deal, meeting in front of a closed business was enough for the officers to act on their suspicions.

They pulled over and arrested both drivers and found a package containing 76 grams of a pale brown powder which smelled like cocaine on the floor of Nipp's car.

They also seized more than $1,600 in Canadian and U.S. cash from the 54-year-old cook and restaurant manager.

At his trial, which began last Tuesday, Nipp's lawyer, Ed Horembala, tried to have the drug evidence against Nipp thrown out on the grounds it was obtained during an unlawful search and seizure, but territorial court judge Heino Lilles allowed it.

The brownish powder found in Nipp's car was a mix of 18 per cent cocaine and 18 per cent heroin, according to Cpl. Todd Monkman of the Whitehorse RCMP drug section, who testified as an expert witness.

While cocaine is a very popular street drug in the Yukon, heroin is virtually unknown here, according to Monkman. Users would not have expected the heroin nor its effects, he said.

At the time, an informant told drug investigators there was a drug on the street which was making cocaine users sick, Monkman said, and the heroin could have been responsible.

As Crown prosecutor Jennifer Grandy pointed out after the trial, Nipp likely didn't know what the cocaine was cut with.

After three days of trial testimony, Nipp pleaded guilty to the charge against him, and both sides agreed to a sentence of 18 months in jail.

Horembala told the court Nipp started using cocaine when he came to the Yukon in 1984, three years after moving to Canada from China.

Over the years, he sired four children, now aged 12 to 26, all of whom live in Vancouver, where they have been raised by their grandparents.

He has worked at, run and owned a number of restaurants around the Yukon since his arrival, and has managed Kathy's Kitchen in the T&M Hotel since 2008.

In April 2009, Nipp's wife divorced him and "partially because of that,” he started taking more cocaine, Horembala said.

His salary and occasional gambling winnings weren't enough to pay for his addiction, so Nipp started dealing, Horembala said.

Judge Lilles seemed hesitant to accept the Crown and defence counsel's joint submission of 18 months' imprisonment. He pointed out that 76 grams is a "considerable amount” (a street value of around $8,000, according to police evidence from past trials).

"I'm not attacking the joint submission – yet.” Lilles said after questioning the length of the sentence.

Both Horembala and Grandy defended the submission, saying Nipp has no criminal record and his forays into drug dealing are directly related to his addiction.

Lilles ultimately accepted the suggested 18-month sentence, along with a 10-year firearms ban.

As for the man's cocaine addiction, the judge said that is for him to deal with, not the courts.

"We are not dealing with a young person,” Lilles said after declining to make any probation orders.

"We are dealing with an older person who knows the issues he has to deal with better than me or you.”