An Aviemore taxi driver has been banned from the roads after being caught drug driving.
Philipe Brooks had more than three times the legal limit of a cannabis derivative in his system when his taxi was stopped by police on the town’s Grampian Road.
His solicitor told the court he had not been working at the time and was simply going shopping.
Brooks, 58, appeared at Inverness Sheriff Court to admit the single drug driving charge.
Solicitor Shay Treanor said it was around 8pm on August 22 last year when officers on patrol in Aviemore spotted Brook’s vehicle.
He said: “They noted at the time it was operating as a taxi.”
Taxi driver failed drugs wipe
Police asked Brooks to take a roadside drugs wipe test, which came back positive.
He was taken to Burnett Road Police Station in Inverness where further testing revealed the level of delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) to be 7.7 microgrammes per litre of blood – the legal limit being two microgrammes.
Solicitor John MacColl, for Brooks, told the court that his client had operated as a taxi driver for more than 12 years and prior to that spent 22 years as an international HGV driver.
He said: “He was in the vehicle he uses as a taxi but Mr Brooks tells me he wasn’t working,” adding that his client had been: “Going to Tesco to do some shopping.”
Driver ate cannabis edible
Mr MacColl said Brooks had been to a party the day before where he had made the “ill advised” decision to smoke cannabis and consume “some kind of cannabis edible”.
He said: “He finds it difficult to believe that he would have been over the limit.”
The court heard that Brooks’ taxi licence had been lost as a consequence of his arrest and that he was not claiming state benefits.
Mr MacColl told Sheriff David Harvie, who noted a previous similar conviction, that his client had regular interaction with police in the course of his work.
He said: “Operating as a taxi driver as he has for 12 years if there was anything more amiss than this it would have come to light before this.”
Sheriff Harvie deferred sentencing for the production of a criminal justice social work report and banned Brooks, of Munro Place, Aviemore, from the roads in the meantime.
The case will call again next month.