Blue Ridge Poison Center seeing more children accidentally consuming cannabis edibles

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) -The Blue Ridge Poison Center and UVA Health’s emergency room are seeing more children with edibles overdose. The center’s director Dr. Chris Holstege says children are eating cannabis edibles thinking it is a normal treat.

He says this only started to become a problem in 2021, and now it is expanding fast. He says they are even seeing children in the intensive care unit at UVA because of this and all they can do is wait out the pain and symptoms of the drug.

“As other states have done this and decriminalized or legalized cannabis, they did see a significant increase in exposures to children,” Dr. Holstege said. “We were expecting this, we were hoping it wouldn’t occur but it’s occurring earlier than I thought.”

He says the best way to avoid running into this problem is keeping any edibles out of reach of children, just like you would do with your other medications.

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