Folks, especially those of you with toddlers around, you’ve got to start doing a better job of hiding your edibles.
According to a new study published in BMC Public Health, the rates at which kids in the United States are ingesting edible recreational drugs have spiked significantly alongside the easing of social and legal stigmas of recreational drugs like marijuana. The researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Central Ohio Poison Center examined 41,612 poison-center reports, finding that the number of children ingesting edibles shot up 3,307 percent between 2000 and 2024, with 96 percent of incidents happening at home.
Most of the cases involved children under the age of three, that sweet, tender age where kids waddle around shoving everything within grasp into their mouths. Marijuana products like edible Gummies made up 85 percent of the ingestions, which also started accounting for most of the increase after 2013.
As you can imagine, kids are especially likely to ingest a marijuana gummy, which is already in a form factor they are familiar with, and the kids have no idea how that fun, bright, colorful, sweet, chewy treat is actually for adults. And that other fun, bright, colorful, sweet, chewy treat is theirs.
Toddlers Are Getting Into Edibles Far More Often Than They Used To
The researchers found that the consequences of ingestion ranged from no symptoms at all to life-threatening. About five percent of children suffered major effects, and six died, all of whom were under three years old, and fentanyl was involved in four of the six.
Drugs other than marijuana showed up, like opioids and stimulants, but much less often than cannabis. They were more likely to lead to intensive care admissions. The study also found a spike in psilocybin-related ingestions, especially in recent years, as some of its stigma has been shed.
The researchers say that the solution is not especially complicated, and you probably already know it, but it bears repeating: drugs that can seriously harm a toddler shouldn’t just be sitting within a child’s arm’s reach. Lock them up in child-resistant, preferably opaque, packaging. It wouldn’t hurt if they had better warning labels on them, too, though the chances of a toddler understanding them are slim.
Simply put, it’s best to just keep your recreational drugs as far away from a child’s grasp as possible.
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