Five students in hospital after taking synthetic high

Five students from Lancaster University are being treated in hospital after taking a synthetic cannabis substitute.

The university sent an alert out on its Twitter account just after 9pm on Wednesday asking all students to check on friends and to call for an ambulance if any were ill.

The tweet said the students had been taken to hospital after using spice, one of the UK’s most common synthetic highs. Now banned, it was previously marketed as a legal alternative to cannabis.

Vicky Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for the university, said police had called university authorities to tell them that the students had been taken to the Royal Lancaster Hospital.

“We’ve got five students who have been taken to hospital with a suspicion that they had taken the drug,” Tyrell said. “Of the five, we know that two of them are seriously ill.”

The five students were taken to hospital after ambulances were called to student halls between 6pm and 7pm, according to Scan, Lancaster University’s student paper.

The university has also since emailed students to warn them against using Spice. “It is extremely important if you have taken the drug to call 999 immediately and call for an ambulance. Please also check on anyone you think may have taken it,” the email, seen by Scan, said.

Spice is just one of a growing multitude of brand names for synthetic cannabis – designer chemicals that mimic the drug’s psychoactive effects.

It is designed to have a structure similar to THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, meaning it binds to the same receptors in the brain and in theory produces a similar high.

The products typically come in the form of herbs sprayed with the chemicals, meaning that they do not necessarily smell like cannabis when smoked.

At least some varieties of spice-style drugs are shown to bind more strongly to brain receptors than natural cannabinoids, potentially explaining reports of unpredictable effects such as heart palpitations, anxiety and acute psychosis.