10-08-2025
Cannabis Poisonings Are Rising, Mostly Among Kids
Amy Enochs was texting with other parents, all wondering why their central Ohio elementary school had gone into lockdown, when the school called. Several fourth graders, including Ms. Enochs's daughter, had eaten marijuana gummies and were being taken to the hospital with racing pulses, nausea and hallucinations.
A classmate had found the gummies at home and mistaken them for Easter candy.
Ms. Enochs recalled hyperventilating that spring day three years ago. 'I was scared to death,' she said, her voice breaking. 'It was shock and panic.'
As legalization and commercialization of cannabis have spread across the United States, making marijuana edibles more readily available, the number of cannabis-related incidents reported to poison control centers has sharply increased: from about 930 cases in 2009 to more than 22,000 last year, data from America's Poison Centers shows. Of those, more than 13,000 caused documented negative effects and were classified by the organization as nonlethal poisonings.
These numbers are almost certainly an undercount, public health officials say, because hospitals are not required to report such cases. More than 75 percent of the poisonings last year involved children or teenagers.
'I definitely have seen floridly psychotic 2-year-olds just waiting for the marijuana to leave their system because they got into someone's gummies,' said Dr. Shamieka Virella Dixon, a pediatrician at Atrium Health Levine Children's Hospital in Charlotte, N.C.
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