The average number of children hospitalized with unintended cannabis poisoning has risen in some counties after food is legalized, according to a new study. Posted Wednesday In the New England Journal of Medicine.
Ontario-based researchers also found that three such provinces – Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario – They saw twice as many hospital admissions as Children’s Hospitals Quebec, which banned eating at the time of the study.
“Unlike adults where they are mostly elevated, maybe a little sleepy, when young children swallow food, they may become very ill. We’ve seen children who have seizures, children who have stopped breathing,” said Dr. Yaron Finkelstein, senior study author and a general practitioner at the Hospital. SickKids in Toronto.
“Their symptoms, especially in young children, can be more severe and potentially life-threatening.”
Federal law requires that cannabis-infused food items — including gummy candy, chocolate or baked goods — be sold in plain packaging, so as not to attract children, and no more than 10 milligrams of the psychoactive compound THC.
But even those precautions “are not enough,” Finkelstein said. “These children are still in danger.”
That’s why Finkelstein and other pediatricians say parents and guardians should store food items away from children. Pediatricians say that children are affected differently by such products and can get very sick. How much was eaten, the type of food, and the child’s age and size are all factors.
“They are made to be delicious, and it can be very tempting for a young person to try one of these thinking it is a delicious cake, brownie, gum or other edible product,” said Dr. Dina Kollek, a pediatrician in Toronto. who did not participate in the study.
What the study shows
As part of the research, Finkelstein and his colleagues wanted to find out how having more cannabis products on the market after legalization affects the number of children hospitalized with poisonings.
They compared regional hospital data over three time periods:
- Before the legalization of cannabis in Canada (January 2015 to September 2018).
- After cannabis became legal for the first time (October 2018 to December 2019).
- After food rationing (January 2020 to September 2021).
In the first period, they discovered that 581 children between the ages of one and nine were hospitalized due to cannabis poisoning.
There were an average of two such cases in hospital per month in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario, according to data provided to CBC News.
The number rose to an average of 5.2 per month after cannabis became legal, according to the data.
After rationing food in those counties, it rose again to 14.9.
In Quebec, the increase was lower. This county averaged about 0.7 monthly hospital visits for cannabis intoxication prior to legalization. But this tripled after food rationing, to about 2.1.
The researchers did not determine whether any children died during the study period.
“It is alarming that legalization has resulted in more children being exposed to accidental ingestion and toxicity from marijuana products,” Kollek said, adding that she had seen a rise in cases during her practice.
Deborah Friedman The study points to what she and her colleagues are seeing in emergency departments, said director of the trauma division at Montreal Children’s Hospital and McGill University Health Center and assistant professor of pediatrics at McGill.
“Certainly the cases we’ve seen were the result of chewing gum, chocolate and biscuits, but certainly the numbers haven’t increased as they seem to be in Alberta, Ontario and Colombia,” she said, adding that it’s still early days in legalization and that more monitoring is a trend needed.
Some parents and guardians don’t know their child has eaten edible food, Finkelstein says, which sometimes makes the diagnosis difficult. Other times, parents choose not to disclose this to doctors.
“When that happens … we have a child who is unconscious where we don’t know the cause and we start doing a lot of investigations,” he said.
“Some of these children are subjected to many painful examinations … until we determine the cause, especially if we have not been told about their exposure to cannabis.”
Friedman says that guardians should watch for common symptoms such as vomiting, drowsiness, increased heart rate, difficulty breathing, anxiety and agitation. She says parents should take their children to the nearest hospital if they are suspected of cannabis poisoning.
Finkelstein says more needs to be done to prevent children from eating foods.
He, Kollek, and Friedman agree that if parents bring food items home, they should be stored safely away from children.
“We want to make sure these products are very, very far away from prying eyes and curious hands and closed like other medications,” Kollek said.
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