Beauty therapist caught drug driving TWICE while 16 times over the limit avoids jail

A qualified beauty therapist who was twice caught drug driving at 16 times the legal limit has walked free from court after a judge ruled she needed ''help rather than punishment.''

Mum-of-one Abbie Heaney, 31, was stopped at the wheel of her Vauxhall Astra after police suspected the vehicle was being used for drug dealing.

Tests showed she had 800 micrograms of the cocaine metabolite Benzoylecgonine per litre of blood in her system.

The legal limit is just 50mg.

Police also recovered a package of crack cocaine, which had been dumped by a passenger she had been chauffeuring.

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Manchester Crown Court heard that Heaney, from Bolton, provided an identical drug driving reading the previous year but escaped with a £120 fine.

She had also been given a suspended jail sentence after being caught smuggling drugs into a prison.

Heaney was spared jail by a judge yesterday (Monday, February 7) after admitting drug driving.

She was instead handed a two-year community order after her lawyer said she had debts of more than £30,000 plus a cocaine habit dating back 15 years.

Sentencing her, Judge Nicholas Dean QC said: ''I want you to think about the position you are putting yourself in because it seems likely that you were assisting in the dealing of drugs, you knew what was going on and what the car was being used for.

''You're not being sentenced for that - but it is reflective of the lifestyle you have been driven to.

"I don't say you have much by way of choices and you have had a difficult life but unless you dig yourself out that situation the point is going to come when in the not too distant future you will be arrested for