Kids accidentally ingesting cannabis edibles at increased rate

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - Retail cannabis is now legal for adults over 21 in Vermont but experts say they’re concerned about kids getting access.

According to data from Northern New England Poison Control, a handful of children up to age five are exposed to cannabis in all forms. In 2017 there was only one case of a child exposed to cannabis, three in 2018, 11 and 12 in 2019 and 2020 respectively, and eight in 2021. In 2022 there was an increase to 16 reported incidents. The overwhelming majority of those exposures were from edibles and from ingestion.

Dr. Jill Rinehart, an associate professor of pediatrics at UVM Larner College of Medicine, said prior to 2015, it was really unusual for a child under the age of five to visit the ED for ingestion of edibles. She said this age group tends to become exposed to edible products because they look like candy and they will eat them if they’re accessible.

“Even a two-and-a-half or five-milligram cannabis chewy, if they take more than one or even one, that’s a really large amount for a small body to handle. So children will have toxicities related to that. Whether that’s just altered mental status, confusion, and lethargy, or with truly high doses, you can have respiratory compromise. But it’s really disconcerting because the child can’t tell you what they’ve done and so it’s really challenging for parents as well,” said Dr. Rinehart

Dr. Rinehart said there’s a small number of patients who end up with ingestion that requires an emergency room visit. But she said there are likely more cases that haven’t been reported because they didn’t rise to the severity of needing to call poison control. There have been no deaths reported that relate to the calls to Poison Control.

“The first step is actually calling poison control. They will talk you through a dose that may have been adjusted. Give an estimate of the weight of the child and then let you know whether or not an ED visit is important. Or not,” said Dr. Rinehart.

Rinehart said it’s important that parents lock up their cannabis products to keep kids from accidentally ingesting it.

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