Ivory Wave


A product sold as powdered bath salts on the internet, in so-called 'head shops' and market stalls, often with a label 'not for human consumption’. It has been billed as providing a 'legal high' given its content of the psychoactive agent MDPV, a powerful stimulant recently banned in the UK as a Class B drug. Ivory Wave surfaced in the UK drug scene in 2009, and was billed as providing a legal high, prompting warnings to all A&E departments, after dozens of overdose cases appeared in Cumbria, Lothian and Dorset. Not all packages of Ivory Wave contain the same thing—e.g., some have lidocaine—but MDPV has an amphetamine-like effect with tachycardia, tachypnoea, visual and auditory hallucinations, and psychotic reactions so severe that extra hands are needed to keep patients on their trolleys and from harming themselves and others