Last updated : December 23, 2024
Although many users of cannabis celebrated the recent change in marijuana’s legality in Colorado, officials at the state’s largest hospital for children are seeing that legal marijuana is having unintended consequences that are adversely affecting some children. According to Michael DiStefano, medical director of the emergency department at Children’s Hospital Colorado, the number of children admitted for accidentally ingesting marijuana is expected to more than double since 2013. So far in 2014, the Children’s Hospital Colorado ER has treated nine children who were brought to the emergency facility due to accidental marijuana ingestion.
Out of the nine children brought to the ER after eating marijuana, seven had to be admitted to the intensive-care unit of the hospital due to experiencing extreme agitation or extreme sedation after eating cannabis. One of the nine young patients admitted in 2014 has needed a respirator in order to control breathing problems that developed after the child ingested marijuana. DiStefano reports that all of the young patients were between the ages of 3 and 7 years of age.
Between the eight year period ranging between 2008 and 2013, Children’s Hospital Colorado ER staff saw a total of only eight children who needed treatment for accidental ingestion of marijuana. DiStefano admitted that an increasing number of hospitals and medical centers across the state are experiencing the same surge in accidental marijuana ingestion cases in children as Children’s Hospital Colorado and he is urging that a solution to the problem be found before the issue gets out of control or causes a child fatality. There have been no estimates regarding the total number of children who may have access to edible marijuana products and have ingested them, but whose parents or guardians did not seek medical help.
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper has proven to be responsive to this unintended consequence of making marijuana usage for adults legal throughout the state. Hickenlooper recently signed House Bill 1366 into law which will insist that state regulators develop specific rules which must be followed so that products containing edible marijuana will be identifiable even if the item is not wrapped in a branded package. These regulations, yet to be developed, might include requiring edible marijuana products to be a specific color or shape or include an identifying stamp.
State Rep. Frank McNulty, who sponsored the new law, expressed his outrage that businesses which are producing edible marijuana products are making them look too enticing to children, often in the colors and shapes of existing popular candy and snack products. The new regulations regarding edible marijuana products was one of several bills affecting the marijuana industry which were also signed by Hickenlooper. A $10 million grant program has been created which will enable scientific researchers to study the medical efficacy of marijuana usage, in addition to new regulations enacted on the amount of concentrated marijuana that businesses can sell at any given time to one individual.
