More Children visit Hospitals after marijuana legalization in Colorado

Posted by Sagar Satapathy on July 27, 2016.

Ever since the Colorado administration legalized marijuana for recreational use, more children are ending up in the emergency room or needing other treatment after accidentally consuming marijuana across the state, according to a new study-- published on Monday in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Researchers headed by a doctor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus found that marijuana exposure in children, mostly toddlers, have increased 150 percent since 2014, when the marijuana became legal for adult recreational use in the state.

The visiting of children to the children Hospital emergency room in 2014 and 2015 became twice to the previous years of marijuana legalization, while annual poison-control cases increased five-fold after the opening of recreational marijuana stores in the state, the study reports.

It is also found that marijuana-related poison-control calls for the children of 9 years and younger make up about two out of every 1,000 calls. According to the study, most pediatric marijuana exposures involved infused edible products such as cannabis-laced brownies, cookies, candy and the like; many exposures happened because marijuana products weren't in child-resistant containers.

The clinical effects of marijuana exposure to the children included drowsiness, lethargy, agitation, vomiting, respiratory depression; muscle rigidity etc., says the study. Ingestion of edible products continues to be a major source of marijuana exposures in children and poses a unique problem because no other drug is infused into a palatable and appetizing form, the study finds.

Notably, medical use of marijuana has been legalized in 25 states in the USA. Colorado decriminalized medical marijuana in 2000, while marijuana became available in the state for recreational use, allowing products to be sold to people 21 and older, in 2014.

comments powered by Disqus