Court / Driver banned for three years after ‘high’ cocaine reading

A DRIVER caught with more than five times the legal limit for cocaine in his system has been given a lengthy ban from the road.

Gary Latham, 50, was stopped by police on 30 July 2025 and failed a roadside drug wipe before being arrested and taken to the police station.

He was found to have 56 microgrammes of cocaine per litre of blood, with the limit being 10 microgrammes.

And he was also found to have 800 microgrammes of the cocaine metabolite benzoylecgonine per litre of blood, with that limit being just 50 microgrammes.

Latham, of Hoofields, Lerwick, admitted the charges when appearing at Lerwick Sheriff Court on Wednesday.

He also admitted to driving carelessly on 19 February 2025 at Ladies Drive, in an incident which saw him veer onto the opposite side of the road and causing another driver to take evasive action to avoid a head-on collision.

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The court heard the driver had to make a “fairly drastic” manoeuvre to prevent the crash.

They then followed Latham afterwards and asked him to pull over, before telling him they would be reporting him to the police.

An angry Latham told them “you f***ing do that”, the court was told.

Defence agent Tommy Allan said Latham had told him he had swerved the vehicle to avoid a cat on the road, although he accepted “that was not what he should have done”.

He admitted that the exchange between Latham and the other driver “did not go well”.

Allan said that Latham had consumed drugs the night before he was stopped by police in July and had thought it would be out of his system.

Sheriff Philip Mann told Latham that he knew “that these are serious charges”, and that this had been a “high reading” of cocaine in his system.

He banned Latham from driving for a total of 40 months and fined him a total of £800.