Rising number of victims a concern

Police have asked Blenheim shops to stop selling legal highs ANNA WILLIAMS

Nicole Gourley

Damian Mair smokes a mixture of legal highs from a bong outside an Invercargill shop as protestors line up. He says he prefers to get stoned because it's his responsible option, if he drinks he gets into trouble with the law.

Synthetic drugs are causing psychosis in users who are ending up in hospital suffering from side effects similar to someone using "P", police and hospital emergency staff say.

Wairau Hospital emergency department clinical head Andrew Morgan said his team had seen a growing number of patients during the past four months who had been smoking synthetic cannabis.

While it was difficult to monitor who had smoked the drug, about one person turned up in the emergency department every week, he said.

In the most serious cases he had seen, patients suffered from paranoid delusions, similar to people who had used methamphetamines, known as P.

"They often get anxious, or are on very high alert," Dr Morgan said.

"You sometimes get it with P. When people are coming off P, they think people are out to get them. It's a little bit like that."

The majority of users who turned up at the emergency department were in their late teens or early 20s. Many did not know what they had taken, he said.

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