Four students have been accused of distributing pills that made their classmates sick.

Nine Cleveland High School students were taken to a hospital and seven others were treated at school after they began vomiting, stumbling around and appeared to be disoriented about 1 p.m. on Tuesday.

"What we found is that the patients, the children, were involved in taking somebody's prescription medications and they had a reaction to the drug," Cleveland Regional Medical Center CEO Gene Schuler said.

School district officials said the students took Lorazepam, a prescription sedative sold under the trade name Ativan.

The school was briefly locked down while investigators worked to determine the source of the drug. Four students, all juveniles, were involved in the distribution of the pills, detectives said. School district officials said those students would be processed and charged with possession or delivery of a controlled substance.

According to some of the students at the school, the pills were sold at lunch for $5 per tablet.

The students who took the pills may also face discipline, officials said.

This incident is the second in two-and-a-half weeks where students at area high schools got sick after taking prescription pills.

Twenty students from Royal High School in Pattison were taken to the emergency room after taking pills that turned out to be a combination of oxycontin and haldol. Two high school students and one adult were arrested and charged.