A DUMBARTON man who bought a class A drug with money he had been given for his birthday has been given a legal slap on the wrists for the offence.

Andrew Banks was found in possession of cocaine worth £400 near the Harp Social Club in the town’s High Street on February 2 last year.

Police spotted him at around 9.45pm and saw that his pupils were dilated and his speech was slurred; when he was searched, 10.27 grams of the drug was found in a bag in his front pocket.

It was the first of three occasions on which the Brucehill resident would be found with a quantity of the same drug during 2018.

He also admitted having quantities of the drug in his possession in Quay Street in the town centre on June 23 last year, and at the Lomond Park Hotel in Balloch on August 18.

On the latter two occasions he was the subject of a bail order granted at Dumbarton Sheriff Court on February 21, following the initial offence.

Banks, 20, of Caledonia Terrace, appeared at the same court on Friday for a review of a community payback order (CPO) imposed for an unrelated charge of assault.

Sentence on all three drug possession matters had been deferred to run alongside the CPO.

Banks’s solicitor, Paul Langan, said his client was making progress on the CPO and had secured employment.

Sheriff William Gallacher said he would allow the CPO to continue but would bring the three drug possession matters to an end.

Banks, who has a previous conviction for assaulting a man outside a Dumbarton nightclub in 2017, was admonished for the oldest of the drug offences, and fined £70 for each of the others.