BOSTON — Emergency rooms around the state are seeing an influx of children who have ingested candy, brownies and other marijuana edibles.
WCVB 5 reported that the Regional Center for Poison Control and Prevention, which serves Massachusetts and Rhode Island, has seen a sharp increase in calls about children eating marijuana-infused food.
“It looks like a brownie, it tastes like a brownie, it is a brownie,” Education Director at Poison Control Cheryl Lang said. “It just happens to be a marijuana-infused brownie, and that’s where they end up getting in trouble.”
In 2019, 20 children have already been seen for ingesting edible, compared to 52 cases for all of 2018.
“Since it tastes like candy, they’re going to eat it like candy,” Lang said. “And maybe even eat more than a person would if they were taking it intentionally.”
Poison Control encourages parents to keep marijuana-infused edibles locked away similar to the way they would store medication.
“It looks exactly like the things we’re used to eating,” Lang said. “And that’s where kids cannot tell the difference, and they will eat it.”
