The number of American states that allow recreational cannabis use has more than doubled in the last five years. A study shows that sweets containing hemp are now increasingly ending up in children’s hands – and they can cause serious damage.
Hemp-infused gummy bears and biscuits are increasingly being eaten by children and can cause serious health problems.
Legalizing cannabis is all the rage in the US. Since 2017 in particular, the number of states that allow recreational use has more than doubled to 21 (plus the Capital District of Washington). In another 18 states, smoking is now allowed, at least for medical reasons. However, federal law still prohibits marijuana, which means you can’t carry cannabis-containing products at airports, on airplanes, or on federal government property.
Foodstuffs with added hemp, such as biscuits, gummy bears or chocolate, so-called “edibles”, are now widely available in stores. But as it now turns out, this increased availability of cannabis products has undesirable side effects: A report on Tuesday in “Pediatrics”, the magazine of the American Pediatric Association, published study shows that between 2017 and 2021 the number of cannabis poisonings among children under six years of age increased massively.
In 2017, just 207 such cases were reported in the National Poison Data System – a database that records poisonings from 55 regional centers; In 2021, this number had increased to a proud 3054, i.e. by 1375 percent. The number of unreported cases is likely to be significantly higher in both cases because not every poisoning was reported to the database. Two- and three-year-olds were affected in more than half of the cases. In addition, the severity of the poisoning increased over the observed period.
Potent effects of cannabis in young children
“Marijuana use can make children very ill,” warns the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on your website. You may have trouble walking, sitting up, or breathing. The authors of the study also point out that the effect can be disproportionately stronger in small children than in adults because small children weigh significantly less. They are also likely to eat more of the hemp-infused candy at one time than would be advisable even for adults. With normal gummy bears, you don’t stop eating after one or two.
In the children examined in the study, the central nervous system was suppressed in 70 percent of cases, which can be associated with clouded consciousness or reduced breathing, for example; other symptoms found were tachycardia, vomiting, restlessness, seizures and/or limited mobility. The symptoms were rarely severe, but in every fourth case the children were admitted to the hospital in 2021, sometimes also to the intensive care units.
Unlike smoking weed, edibles can take several hours to show symptoms. He sees kids with cannabis poisoning several times a month, University Hospital Colorado Emergency Medical Center Andrew Monte told the magazine the radio station NPR. Parents should take their children to a doctor immediately if they suspect they have used cannabis.
The corona pandemic as an amplifying factor
A problem for small children is that products with the psychoactive substance tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) can hardly be distinguished visually from conventional foods. Upon close inspection and sniffing, an adult might notice a greenish color and a faint hemp odor. However, children are unlikely to notice this – especially if they have a craving for something sweet.
In almost all cases, the poisonings occurred at home. The corona pandemic also seems to have played a role in the sharp increase in the number of cases, the authors write: If you compare the number of cases in the pandemic years 2020 and 2021 with the previous years, there is a significant increase. That could be because during the pandemic more adults turned to cannabis products. In addition, children spent more time at home than before.
Misleading packaging
Another problem is the packaging of the sweets with cannabis: With bright colors and cartoon characters, the products are often so appealing that children become curious. Some hemp-infused foods also look almost identical to conventional candy, which is why some established companies use these manufacturers have sued. “In my view, the problem is not the legalization of these products, but that they are not packaged in the same way as other intoxicants or medications are,” said Antonia Nemanich, an emergency room physician at Rush University in Chicago and one of the co-authors the study to the television channel CNN. “They’re advertised as if it’s just another delicious candy.”
The Professional Association of American Toxicologists fordert for a long time that packaging with cannabis-containing food should be provided with special security seals that small children cannot open.
The authors of the study also require that adults not consume such sweets in front of children, so as not to encourage imitation and arouse cravings, as with any other behavior. Pediatricians should also educate parents about all these dangers.