A 30-year-old businesswoman from Kirkby has avoided jail despite being convicted of drug-driving offences five times, after admitting to being in charge of a vehicle while more than eight times over the legal ketamine limit. Lucy Newall, a care company manager, was sentenced at Liverpool Magistrates' Court following two separate arrests earlier this year, with the case highlighting how a spiralling drug addiction, rooted in an abusive relationship, can lead to repeated offending and yet still result in a rehabilitative rather than custodial sentence. The case matters both as an example of judicial leniency towards addiction-driven crime and as a cautionary account of ketamine's grip on users.

District Judge Mary Dowrick handed Newall a 12-month community order with 15 rehabilitation activity days, rather than the 12-week jail term she had faced, after hearing she had at times been left bed-bound by her addiction and related health problems. She was arrested on 3 January after police found her in a parked car on Leeds Street, Liverpool, with white powder residue in the vehicle, and blood tests showed 160 micrograms of ketamine per litre; a second arrest followed on 11 March after she crashed her £30,000 Cupra Formentor into railings in Kirkby, again testing positive for ketamine at the same level, plus trace cocaine below the drug-drive threshold. Her lawyer told the court Newall's addiction stemmed from a traumatic, abusive relationship and worsened after the deaths of both her grandmothers, leaving her out of work and desperate to return to the care sector.