A PARAMEDIC has been sacked for inhaling LAUGHING GAS in his ambulance to get a quick high.

Richard Sanders, 54, was caught taking a secret shot while lying on a stretcher during a night shift.

The gas is normally given as a painkiller to women in childbirth or kidney stone victims.

But it is also known as hippy crack because it gives a rapid but short-lived high.

The gas, properly called Entonox, is sold illegally in clubs and pubs at £2 for a balloon-full.

But experts warn it can causing lasting damage to health.

When Sanders got up he was staggering and slurring his words, a disciplinary hearing was told.

And he was incapable of doing his 999 job at Llantwit Major, South Wales.

He was struck off for five years by the Health Professions Council, sitting in Cardiff.

And he has been formally sacked from his £22,000-a-year post by the Welsh Ambulance Trust.

The council said it was acting to protect the public as Sanders, who did not attend the hearing, had put patient safety at risk.

Earlier this year an inquest heard how David Watts, 23, was found dead at his Birmingham home next to a large cylinder of the gas.