A GRIEVING father has been banned from driving because he took cannabis to help him sleep at night.

Kai Brandon Crosby’s baby died before it was a month old, York Magistrates Court heard.

His solicitor Kevin Blount said since the death a couple of years ago, Crosby had struggled to sleep and used cannabis to help him rest at night.

He failed a drugs test when police stopped him at the wheel of his car on Fulford Road on May 9.

“He had not smoked cannabis that day,” his solicitor Kevin Blount said.

District judge Adrian Lower told Crosby: “If you choose to use cannabis, albeit as a form of relief of sorts, cannabis will stay in your system for far longer than alcohol ever will.”

He added that cannabis could still be in the body “some weeks” after it was smoked.

Crosby, 20, of The Crescent, Kelfield between York and Selby, pleaded guilty to drug driving.

He was banned from driving for 16 months, fined £120 and ordered to pay £85 prosecution costs and a £34 statutory surcharge.

The drug driving law sets a limit for cannabis in the blood below which drivers are not prosecuted, similar to the alcohol limit in the drink driving law.

The district judge said he could understand why Crosby found it very difficult to cope with his grief.

But “cannabis was not the answer,” he said. “It never will be.”

Mr Blount said the ban would hit Crosby hard because he lived in the countryside “miles from anywhere” and would have problems getting work.

He had worked in a care home, but it had had to close down.