Two betting shop employees were taken ill in front of stunned punters after smoking legal highs.

Owen Devereux and Dimitri Argitis both fell ill after smoking synthetic cannabis Spice at Ladbrokes’ West Street branch in Brighton.

Mr Devereux, 22, said he and Mr Argitis, 25, who is his boss, took the drug in the hope it would give them a “five-minute buzz”.

But the pair had an adverse reaction to the legal cannabis replacement, with Mr Devereux ending up at the Royal Sussex County Hospital on a drip.

The duo are now facing disciplinary action from Ladbrokes.

Mr Devereux, from Hove, said: “I smoked half of it and left the remaining half outside for Dimitri to smoke.

“The next thing I knew my entire body locked up.

“Dimitri came back in and saw me fitting and he started to panic.

“After my experience I would plead with anyone not to try legal highs.

“Because the word legal is used, it makes you think that it’s okay to use, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“As a society we don’t particularly know what’s in them and that’s the really scary thing about it.

“What’s bad is that I ended up in hospital.

“What’s even worse is that we could both lose our jobs over it.

“Drugs – legal or not – can ruin your life.”

Security officers from Brighton’s Business Improvement District (BID) confirmed they were called to the Ladbrokes branch before the Ladbrokes duo were taken to hospital.

A BID spokesman said: “We received a call from Molly Malones Pub across the road from Ladbrokes, reporting that two employees had collapsed, to which we immediately sent out two security officers to wait for medical assistance and to ensure that customers vacated the premises.”

A Ladbrokes spokesman said: “Like all responsible companies we have very clear and strict rules in place relating to substance misuse by colleagues and a disciplinary process where there are alleged to be breaches of these rules.”

Factfile

Drugs information service Talk to Frank says synthetic cannabinoids including Spice act like THC, the active substance in cannabis.

They may be stronger than typical cannabis and because these substances are so new, they may have unknown effects.

Experts are concerned that synthetic cannabinoids have the potential to be more harmful than cannabis, because of the high strength of these compounds compared to cannabis and because of the range of different chemicals being produced.