WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 — During the last five years leading up to 2022, there has been a significant increase in the number of young children who inadvertently ingested the psychotropic drug cannabis, also known as marijuana or hashish depending on how it is administered, in the United States.
According to an analysis of records from the National Poison Data System, there were more than 7,040 exposures to edible cannabis among children under the age of 6 between 2017 and 2021. According to experts, this trend is increasing due to the large number of imitation children’s foods in circulation. Plastic bags that look like familiar chips or candy, but what’s inside could be harmful to children.
In 2017, 207 cases of accidental exposure to edible cannabis in children under the age of 6 were reported. By 2021, there were 3,054, according to the study. In 2020 alone, accidental exposures of young children to the drug accounted for more than 40 percent of all contact calls from people using the drug, according to the study, published in the journal Pediatrics.
“I work in the emergency room, I take calls from the poison center, and we’re certainly seeing more cases like this,” said Dr. Antonia Nemanich, who works in medical toxicology at Rush Emergency Medicine in Chicago.
Nemanich told CNN that the causes are multifactorial. In fact, American children today are at greater risk of accidental poisoning from marijuana edibles. There was a particularly high peak during the pandemic years, she noted, when children were at home more often.
In 2017, eight states and the District of Columbia legalized the recreational use of cannabis and 30 legalized it for medicinal purposes. By 2021, those numbers had increased significantly. Many psychotropic foods come in the form of candy, cookies, brownies, and chocolates, products that can be very appealing to young children.
Research has shown that the packaging of some food products, especially those available on the black market, looks almost identical to reality. Some packages also contain cartoon characters. Even if the packaging warns that the product contains cannabis, it is in the fine print and many young children cannot even read.
Exposure of a child to cannabis can have serious consequences. They can become seriously ill and have difficulty walking, sitting or breathing, various clinical authorities have noted. Children weigh less than adults, so the effects of a drug can be much more toxic. Also, packets usually contain more than one edible; Adults know to stop after eating just one, but kids don’t.
The American College of Medical Toxicology has urged the industry to change their packaging to make it less easy for children to become confused and for packaging to be easier to open.