A DRUG-driver hurt in two previous crashes got behind the wheel despite smoking cannabis and eating cake laced with the substance hours earlier.

Reece Edward Edmondson, 21, was stopped at Fell View Close, Aspatria, after police followed his white Audi through the town on August 21, 2020.

Officers spoke with Edmondson. “The defendant’s eyes were glazed and his speech was slow and protracted,” prosecutor Peter Wilson told Carlisle Crown Court.

Edmondson was almost six times over the legal drug-drive limit.

His lawyer, Anthony Parkinson, told Judge Nicholas Barker: “He had smoked some cannabis and eaten some cake that was laced with cannabis the day before.”

Mr Parkinson outlined the defendant’s serious physical difficulties after a previous crash, of the subsequent surgery he underwent and the prospect of future operations.

‪Judge Barker told Edmondson he should have “been on notice” having received a suspended jail term in 2019 for a cannabis supply crime.‬

He admitted drug-driving and flouting the previous sentence by committing the August offence.

‪“I’m acutely aware of the fact you have significant medical difficulties as a result of not one, but two serious road traffic incidents,” said the judge.

“When you were driving having consumed cannabis, it should have made you all the more aware of the dangers that that can present both yourself and others.”‬

‪Edmondson was “well aware” he had taken cannabis before being stopped, said Judge Barker, who felt the uncertainty expressed by the defendant to a probation officer over the strength of cannabis he took “seems to completely miss the point”.‬

‪”The fact is you simply had no idea how strong that was, and you took the risk,” the judge told him. “I consider this to be a serious act of driving over the prescribed limit.”‬

‪Believing Edmondson, of Caldew Street, Silloth, needed to do more work with the probation service, Judge Barker imposed a six-month community order comprising a rehabilitation requirement. Edmondson must serve an 18-month driving ban, pay £150 costs and a £50 fine for breaching the suspended sentence.