Protecting kids from pot

Cannabis-infused brownies, suckers, and gummy bears at Colorado’s growing number of marijuana dispensaries must now come in child-proof packaging, thanks largely to the efforts of two University of Colorado researchers.
In May, pediatrician George Wang, an instructor at Children’s Hospital Colorado and the CU School of Medicine, published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showing a concerning increase in the number of children under age 12 unintentionally eating pot.

Before Sept. 30, 2009, zero kids were treated in the emergency room at Children’s for unintentional marijuana ingestion. Between October 1, 2009 — when the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it would not pursue convictions against medical-marijuana users — and Dec. 31, 2011, 14 were treated. Eight were admitted. Two ended up in the intensive care unit. At least one had become so sedated that he stopped breathing properly. The youngest patient was 8 months old. Wang and his colleagues suspect a similar spike occurred at emergency rooms across the Front Range.

“Our concern with these products is that they have a very high concentration of THC in them, so when a small child eats a brownie or cookie they get a huge dose and react more severely,” Wang said.

He notes that one pot brownie can contain as much as 300 mg of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in cannabis. In comparison, clinical trials have shown that the maximum tolerated dose of prescription dronabinol (synthetic THC prescribed to combat nausea in cancer patients), would be 4 to 12 mg based on weight for someone a child’s size.

“We are talking about a potentially very large overdose here,” Wang said.

When Michael Kosnett, a physician with Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver, heard of the study, he was reminded of a campaign his predecessors waged more than 60 years ago that ended up saving countless children from being poisoned. Well aware that kids have a tendency to put pills in their mouths, toxicologists in the 1950s developed the first child-proof medicine caps in the 1950s and 1960s, leading to a 90 percent drop in pediatric medication poisonings.

In 1970, the federal Poison Prevention Packaging Act was passed, making child-resistant packaging mandatory for household products (including chemicals, cosmetics, prescription drugs) that present a risk of “serious injury or illness to children under five” who may drink, eat, or handle the contents.

Yet until recently, marijuana-infused treats were almost universally sold in plain plastic packages.

“It is well known that children will consume medicine that is left in their reach and that is not even tasty,” Kosnett said. “If you have pharmaceutical ingredients infused into candy or cookies or chips, the hazard becomes all the greater.”

Concerned that such treats would become even more widely available in 2014, when recreational marijuana use was decriminalized, Kosnett and Wang presented their research to the Governor’s Amendment 64 Task Force, and testified before a legislative committee of the Colorado Senate.

A spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Revenue, which was tasked with writing the rules governing marijuana sales in the state, said their input was “invaluable.” The new rules, adopted Sept. 9, require that all marijuana be sold in child-resistant packaging.

But Kosnett said his work isn’t done. At least 18 states have now decriminalized medical marijuana, and several are eyeing new laws (like those in Colorado and Washington state) that make recreational marijuana legal, too.
He is now working with toxicologists and lawmakers elsewhere in hopes that they’ll follow Colorado’s lead.
“It’s my understanding that child-resistant packaging is not commonly, if at all used, in these other places,” he says. “I believe it should be.”

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