Cases of young kids eating legal weed edibles skyrocketing, researchers say

Maybe it's a chocolate bar. Or a piece of gummy candy. It could be a cookie.

At least, that's what it looks like to a child. They don't understand what that weird, earthy smell is. They don't know what marijuana smells like.

They reach up and take a bite, leaving crumbs or smears of chocolate on their face.

And a few minutes later, you're rushing to the hospital while on the phone with poison control explaining how, exactly, your toddler just got high.

It's a hypothetical scenario, but one becoming increasingly more common amid the legalization of marijuana across the country, according to a new study published this week in the American Academy of Pediatrics.

There were more than 3,000 calls to poison control centers for children ingesting cannabis in 2021, nearly 15 times the number of cases — just 207 — reported five years earlier, according to an analysis of the National Poison Data System from a group of researchers at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.

In New Jersey, the number of poison control calls for children ingesting cannabis more than doubled over four years, from 73 calls in 2019 to 162 calls in 2022, said Bruce Ruck, managing director of the New Jersey Poison Control Center at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

"We are seeing quite dramatic increases here in New Jersey," Ruck said. "It started prior to New Jersey allowing these products, so maybe people were making it themselves or buying it in other states. But the big take home message is that marijuana in young children is not what it's like in adults."

The children who ingest cannabis are almost always young — more than two-thirds were less than four years old — and more than a quarter were admitted to a health care facility in 2021, according to the study, published this week by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Nine percent of patients were admitted to a critical care unit.

In New Jersey, patients were treated for seizures and others required respiratory assistance, Ruck said.

"You can't just let them sleep it off, or let them walk around laughy-eyed," he said. "We can't do that with these little kids. They can run into big problems."

The problem is a simple one: Snacks are universal — adults like cookies, just like their kids.

Children mistakenly eating a cannabis-infused edible — such as candies, gummies or baked goods — isn't a new phenomenon. When Colorado saw a spate of children accidentally consuming cannabis shortly after legal weed sales began, a new law was passed that prohibited anything that could attract children, like cannabis-infused gummies shaped like fruit snacks. It also required manufacturers to place products in child-proof packages and separate each product into individual doses, such as the perforated pieces of a chocolate bar.

Those laws have been updated and adopted by nearly every other legal weed state in the country.

“When it’s in a candy form or cookies, people don’t think of it in the same way as household chemicals or other things a child could get into,” Dr. Marit Tweet, one of the researchers, told the Associated Press. “But people should really be thinking of it as a medication.”

But the last five years have opened up the floodgates of cannabis. In 2017, just nine states had legalized marijuana for adult use — and only five had dispensaries up and running. Last week, the first legal weed dispensary opened in New York City and, next week, Connecticut is poised to become the 18th state to begin legal weed sales.

That's a lot of adults buying a lot of cannabis — and a lot of kids within reach.

"There's a greater availability when people don't feel the need to hide their cannabis because it's not against the law anymore," said Dr. David Nathan, a Princeton-based psychiatrist and founder of Doctors for Cannabis Regulation, a national group of physicians promoting the legalization and regulation of marijuana. "People have always failed to secure their cannabis properly. That's always been true and it's no less true now."

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But further context is key, Nathan said.

The 3,054 children exposed to cannabis in 2020 is less than 3% of the children who ingested cosmetics or personal care products that same year, according to the National Capital Poison Center. And unlike cannabis, those products could include lethal chemicals.

According to the Southern Illinois study, 70% of children exposed to cannabis experienced a central nervous system depression — slurred speech, drowsiness and lack of coordination are among the most common effects.

But parents have been calling poison control centers for those situations for as long as hotlines have existed. Until recently, many parents may have avoided calling the authorities if their child ingested marijuana.

"People are much more likely to contact poison control or bring their child to an emergency room if they're not afraid of child protective services immediately being called, which is what would happen prior to legalization," Nathan said. "That's a good outcome, that parents feel comfortable getting medical care for their child."

Cannabis regulators have adapted over the years. Unlike Colorado, many of the packaging and labeling requirements in New Jersey were already included in the original marijuana legalization laws, one of the first official discussions held by the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission was on packaging and labeling standards.

In February, they adopted an official, universal symbol that must be prominently placed on all cannabis items: a cannabis leaf within a yellow triangle with a black border, like a traffic symbol, along with a hand on a stop sign and "not safe for kids" in capital letters.

The CRC also requires the leaf logo to be imprinted on the actual product within the package.

But health officials have also encouraged parents to treat their cannabis items the way they treat the other off-limits products in their home.

"The adage of just keeping it out of the reach of children is good, but we have to take it further," Ruck said. "How can you keep this out of the reach of a 5-year-old standing on top of a chair to get the cookies out of the cookie jar? Do they know what 'THC' is? It has to be locked up."

Mike Davis has spent the last decade covering New Jersey local news, marijuana legalization, transportation and a little bit of everything else. He's won a couple of awards that make his parents very proud. Contact him at mdavis@gannettnj.com or @byMikeDavis on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: NJ legal weed: Edible treats cases with children on the rise