ST PAUL, Minn. — Halloween is just days away, and with that, comes a renewed national focus on making sure marijuana edibles are safely stored away from children.
Trainees for Child Injury Prevention is a national group of medical experts hosting specific Days of Action throughout the year, such as car seat safety and drowning prevention. As more states legalize marijuana, this is now the group's first action day focused on safe edibles storage.
Pediatric ICU doctor Dr. Andrew Kiragu is part of the campaign.
"Put your stash away from your kid's stash," said Kiragu, who is also the associate chief of critical care for Children's Minnesota. "A lot of them look just like candy."
Minnesota legalized THC edibles in July last year. Since then, according to Kiragu, both calls to poison control centers and visits to metro hospitals have increased.
Kiragu also points to a Journal of Pediatrics study released this year, in which researchers looked at data from poison centers nationwide and found, in 2017, there were about 207 children under the age of 6 who unintentionally ingested marijuana edibles. In 2021, there were as many as 3,054 children affected.
"So, within that four-year period of time, there was an over 1,300-percent increase," Kiragu said.
And while edibles are safe for most adults, doctors say they're dangerous for kids, especially those under 6 years old.
"Think about the normal 'recommended dose' of a marijuana gummy, which is a 10-milligram marijuana gummy," Kiragu said. "A dose that will make a child have a severe side effect would be about anything over 1.7 milligrams per kilogram …so a 10-kilo 2-year-old would take two gummies, and they already have taken a toxic amount."
He said some kids may just be more drowsy than normal after ingestion, but others have been hospitalized because they struggled to breathe.
"Children who have low blood pressure, they need blood pressure medication to bring their blood pressure up; children with seizures because of an overdose in marijuana," he said. "We just want to be careful to keep children safe."
That's why it's important to store edibles safely year-round, including on Halloween as more candy goes around.
"Think of it as a medication," Kiragu said. "You want to keep it in a container that kids can't open easily. You want to keep it in a medicine cabinet locked away and you want to keep it in packaging that doesn't look attractive."
More information is available on social media under the hashtag #SafeEdiblesStorage.
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