Drugs advisers' move against drug which left nine people in hospital recently comes amid concern over misuse of laughing gas.
Annihilation, a "legal high" sold as a "head-blowing herbal incense", is to be banned after leaving nine people in hospital in the past three months.
The substance is among a group of hundreds of new synthetic "designer" compound drugs, many of which imitate the effects of controlled drugs such as cannabis or ecstasy that the government's drugs advisers are to recommend be banned next week.
The warning came as the government's chief drugs adviser also voiced concerns about potentially dangerous new recreational uses being made of laughing gas (nitrous oxide) and helium – but made clear there was no intention to ban these widely used gases.
Professor Les Iversen, the chairman of the government's advisory committee on the misuse of drugs (ACMD), said that Annihilation was a particularly potent compound that had left young people hospitalised in Glasgow and Blackburn. He said youngsters had become severely agitated and over-stimulated after taking it.
