A CANNABIS dealer has been officially cleared of drug driving after his blood sample was among those caught up in a national forensic scandal.

Liam Leslie Mulgrew, 24, also kept his freedom when he appeared before York Crown Court to answer for his commercial dealing in the drug.

Rob Galley, prosecuting, said police found enough skunk cannabis at Mulgrew's home to fetch £5,000 in street deals, £1,097 in cash and other drug dealing paraphernalia.

Hours earlier, at 11.15pm on October 7, they had stopped Mulgrew on the A1237 heading towards Clifton Moor with cannabis in his pocket.

They sent a sample of his blood to private forensics lab Randox Testing Services of Manchester, which declared it broke the cannabis limit for driving.

In April Mulgrew pleaded guilty to drug driving at York Magistrates Court where he was banned from driving and sent to York Crown Court.

Former employees at Randox are currently under investigation for allegedly manipulating quality control data. More than 6,000 samples from police forces across the north of England could be involved.

Mr Galley said a retest of Mulgrew's sample by a different organisation had revealed it did not break drug driving laws.

Judge Andrew Stubbs QC allowed Mulgrew to change his plea on the drug driving charge to not guilty, formally acquitted him, and removed the driving ban.

Mulgrew, of Lady Mill Garth, off Crombie Avenue, Clifton, pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis with intent to supply it to others.

The judge gave him a nine-month prison sentence suspended for 18 months on condition he does 25 days' rehabilitative activities and 100 hours' unpaid work for the drug trafficking offence and ordered him to pay £300 prosecution costs.

For Mulgrew, Elizabeth Fry said the interim driving ban had been a kind of punishment in itself.

He accepted that although he himself used cannabis he would have sold at least some of the cannabis at his home commercially.

He worked for a family firm, which would suffer if he was sent to prison.