PARENTAL ABUSE –
Jan. 3, 2023 – Clinical toxicologist Varun Vohra said the Michigan Poison & Drug Information Center at Wayne State University School of Medicine, where he is the director, has experienced its own “pretty healthy increase in pediatric marijuana exposures, especially kids under 5 and mostly with edibles.” The numbers continue to rise: In 2021, the poison center had 211 cases of youngsters under 19 exposed to edibles (156 of them under age 5); through October of 2022, it already had 225 cases (164 under age 5). The Poison Control Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where toxicologist Kevin Osterhoudt is the medical director, reported a fivefold increase in annual reported THC cases involving children under 6 from 2014 to 2019. In one case, a child was poisoned by a colorful crispy cereal treat that she had picked out at a neighborhood grocery store; the child’s caregiver had not noticed that it contained delta-8, a form of THC, derived from hemp.
