CALLS for legal highs to be banned were growing last night after a father told how his teenage son was rushed to hospital suffering from the effects of a drug he bought in a town centre shop.

Trevor Brown, from Darlington, said drugs laws need to be reformed and sale of legal highs banned altogether.

His 16-year-old son and a friend were hospitalised after experimenting with the herbal legal high 420.

The pair bought the substance from a shop in Darlington, raided last week on suspicion of selling legal highs containing banned substances.

Shortly after ingesting the drug the teenagers took a turn for the worse and were rushed to hospital with problems, including erratic heartbeats.

They made a full recovery, but Mr Brown believes people are risking their lives by taking drugs that are untested and unregulated.

Slamming shops for selling potentially dangerous chemicals to underage children, he said: “It’s about time the law tackled this, they’re selling stuff to people but they don’t know what’s in it or what it will do.

“I want to beg parents not to let their children become the next victims because somewhere along the line this is going to kill somebody.

“Legal highs need controlling like we control everything else we can buy and I want to see them banned from shops.”

His plea came as an investigation by The Northern Echo revealed the number of incidents involving legal highs being reported to police has risen massively in the past three years.

Mr Brown said: “Every kid experiments and when they see it’s legal, they think it’s okay - like buying sweets from a sweet shop; you presume if it’s on sale then it’s been tested.

“This shop is in a town centre, not a dark industrial estate, these people are in our faces selling this stuff openly in our town – it needs to stop.”

His sentiments were echoed by Darlington Borough Council’s leader, Bill Dixon, who is also calling for a change in law.

He said: “It’s not an unreasonable assumption to believe if you’re buying something in a shop it’s safe.

“But the tragedy is that we’re going to have more fatalities with legal highs than illegal drugs because nobody knows what’s in them.

“They should be tested and regulated like we regulate food, furniture and clothes and the position should be that they’re banned until they’re tested, not the other way around.”

*Two 21-year-old men arrested in connection with last week's raid have been released on bail while investigations continue.