New alert over 'legal highs' after six admitted to hospital

Many of those taken to West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven last week were suffering with extreme agitation and visual and auditory hallucinations, said North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust.

In the most serious cases, patients were admitted to the critical care unit and placed under cardiac monitoring for up to 12 hours.

In one case it took four porters to restrain a young woman believed to have taken the party drug, the trust said.

A 17-year-old boy was also arrested on suspicion of actual bodily harm after he allegedly assaulted a man who worked at the hospital.

Another five people thought to have taken Ivory Wave were brought into the same hospital at the weekend but were later allowed home.

Last Wednesday police seized "numerous" substances including Ivory Wave when they raided four addresses in Whitehaven and Workington.

Two Whitehaven men, aged 55 and 29, were arrested on

suspicion of supplying class B drugs and then bailed as tests were carried out on the substances.

Dr Kate Wilmer, consultant cardiologist at West Cumberland Hospital, said the symptoms witnessed were much worse than the effects of the banned drug mephedrone.

She said: "People are coming into the hospital in an extremely agitated state with acute paranoid psychosis. If you try to give them anything to help them, they are convinced you are trying to harm them so we have had to completely knock out two or three of them in order to treat them

"All have had a very fast heart rate so we have been monitoring them in the critical care unit for about 12 hours. The drugs are getting out of their system but it is taking two to three days for the agitation and psychosis to wear off."

She added the initial symptoms shown could be the "tip of the iceberg".

"What we don't know is whether this could cause long-term psychiatric problems for these people," she said.

No similar cases had been reported at West Cumberland Hospital before last week and none have so far been seen at Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle.

Detective Inspector Jason Robinson, of West Cumbria CID, said: "What these incidents show us is that young people in west Cumbria are continuing to put their future and their lives at risk by taking drugs.

"We know that many so-called legal highs often contain class B controlled drugs (such as mephedrone and BZP) and the risks and consequences of getting involved with them are serious."