In the fifties and sixties, kids raided their parents’ liquor cabinet, but in 21st century Colorado, kids are scarfing down mom and dad’s pot-laced cookies, brownies, and chocolate bars.
How could you blame kids for raiding their parents’ pot-laced goodie stash when they look like any other candy?
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In January, Colorado permitted special stores to sell marijuana to adults but retained a legal ban on possession of pot by minors.
Marijuana was legalized for medical use in Colorado in 2000, but in 2009, dispensaries multiplied after federal authorities said they wouldn’t raid establishments licensed by the state.
Now manufacturers are adding marijuana to everything from cookies to chocolate bars, sodas and candies, and strength and serving size vary widely.
As a result, the easy access to marijuana in Colorado is raising concerns among police, parents and teachers who worry that kids are getting sick from eating pot-infused “edibles.”
USA Today reports twelve students were suspended last month after they ate marijuana-infused candies at their suburban Denver middle school. The two students who supplied the candies are being expelled.
“A couple of our teachers noticed some kids who weren’t acting right,” says Steve Saunders, a spokesman for Shaw Heights Middle School in Westminster, Colo.
“You never know when they’re walking down the hall what they’re eating. It’s a lot harder to tell when they’re eating edibles instead of out smoking a joint in the parking lot.”
The Rocky Mountain Poison Center reports a statistically significant rise in the number of parents calling the poison-control hotline to report their kids had consumed marijuana.
Marijuana Edibles should be packaged in an child-proof opaque containers, a regulation which this company is truly violating.
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Emergency room physician and toxicology expert George “Sam” Wang of Children’s Hospital in Denver says his emergency room is treating one to two kids a month for accidental marijuana ingestion, mostly in the form of edibles such as brownies or candies.
Kids, Wang says, don’t eat pot plants. But they do eat, either unwittingly or on purpose, marijuana-infused foods. Since edibles are not state-tested for strength, the effects can vary widely from product to product.
Wang says parents need to take precautions to keep edibles away from minors. “It’s a very unique situation,” Wang says. “There is no other drug that’s built into such an attractive, edible product. You have to treat it like any other medicine.”
Regulations require marijuana edibles to be sold in opaque, child-resistant packaging bearing a sticker from the agency.
“This is a significant public safety risk, so we take it very seriously,” says Julie Postlethwait, a spokeswoman for the state’s marijuana enforcement division.
Edibles manufacturers say parents must play a role in keeping pot out of the hands of kids, no matter the form.
“There is a level of discretion and education and, frankly, tenacity on the behalf of parents that has to occur,” says Joe Hodas, a spokesman for the Denver-based Dixie Elixirs edibles manufacturer. “If you leave pot lying around, kids are going to find it.”
Wang urges Colorado parents to have a conversation about how to keep marijuana away from kids before the problem becomes widespread.
“It’s a trend and a change we need to anticipate and watch going forward, rather than letting it get out of hand,” he says. “We’ve had kids who have been very sick, and we don’t want to wait for a kid to die before we act.”
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