A MAN who went to Amsterdam for his 30th birthday and ate a cannabis cake was caught drug driving when he returned home.

Petar Duricic admitted drug driving when he appeared at Worcester Magistrates Court on Thursday.

Adrian Jones, prosecuting, said Duricic was stopped by police in his Volkswagen Golf on the A38 in Earls Croome on November 25, and when PC Waterhouse spoke to him he smelt cannabis.

Duricic was asked to take a roadside test which he failed so he was taken to the police station where he gave a blood sample that had 3.7 ug/l of a compound of cannabis - the legal limit being 2ug/l.

Shaun Newey, defending, stressed to magistrates Duricic had taken the drugs in the Netherlands, where it is legal, during his trip to celebrate his birthday on November 22.

"He did not drive to or from the airport," Mr Newey said.

"He left it 24 hours before he drove again - he thought it worked like alcohol.

"He was informed this was not the case, and this is something he is now aware of."

Mr Newey said Duricic, of Laburnum Walk, Upon-upon-Severn, works shifts in Tewkesbury and, faced with a ban, he had been trying to arrange lifts to work.

This meant, Mr Newey said, that whether he now carried on in the job was "on a knife edge", appealing for the ban period to be kept to a minimum.

Chairman of the magistrates bench, Howard Painter, told Duricic he was being disqualified from driving for a year.

He was also fined £120, and told to pay costs of £135 and a victim surcharge of £30 - a total of £285. Duricic is to pay this off at a rate of £50 a month.

Mr Painter explained that magistrates had based his fine on the anticipation Duricic was now likely to lose his job, as a result on being given the ban.

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