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 Yearly admissions for accidental marijuana intoxication at pediatric
emergency departments in France more than doubled between 2004 and
2014, researchers found.
"I was surprised by the increase of admissions in my unit for
cannabis unintentional intoxication among toddlers and by the
increase of severe presentation after children had eaten part or a
entire cannabis resin stick," said lead author Dr. Isabelle Claudet,
who heads the pediatric emergency department at Hopital des Enfants
in Toulouse.
Pediatricians in intensive care units were also starting to see
toddlers who had ingested the concentrated marijuana product,
Claudet told Reuters Health by email.
She and her colleagues write in the journal Pediatrics that France
has the highest level of drug consumption in Europe even though
marijuana is illegal in the country.
The most popular version of marijuana or cannabis in France is
hashish, a concentrated resin often sold in small olive-shaped
pellets.
The researchers analyzed data collected from 2004 to 2014 on
children under age 6 who were admitted to 24 pediatric emergency
departments.
During that time, 235 children were admitted for intoxication with
symptoms like drowsiness, seizures, altered consciousness and
euphoria.
Yearly pediatric emergency department admissions among that age
group for accidental intoxication increased by 133 percent.
Similarly, calls to French poison control centers for those types of
exposures increased 312 percent.
In most cases, the children had come into contact with the drug at
home. Three quarters of them had ingested the drug; nearly the same
proportion ingested sticks, balls or cones made of the resin.
Most of the children - 86 percent - were experiencing symptoms like
euphoria or drowsiness, but 35 percent had severe symptoms,
including 33 children who were comatose. Some children were also in
respiratory failure, and eight required a ventilator.
Based on data from French customs, the researchers say that over the
course of the study period, the amount of the active component in
hashish - known as THC - more than doubled, from 9.3 percent per
gram to 20.7 percent per gram.
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Claudet said children should be kept away from cannabis products,
and parents should realize how dangerous the drug is.
Also, she said, "Policymakers should take in consideration this
evolution and such intoxication should be tightly monitored and it
should be mandatory to report such cases. A solution has to be
(found) to regulate THC concentration in cannabis and stop its
increasing evolution."
In the U.S. state of Colorado, where recreational marijuana is
legal, researchers reported in 2016 that the rate of
marijuana-related visits by children under age 10 to a hospital or
poison control center nearly doubled. (http://bit.ly/2wQaQxp)
Dr. Sam Wang from Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora, who led
the 2016 study, told Reuters Health that parents and caregivers need
to be educated about marijuana, keep the products out of reach and
keep them properly packaged.
"Treat it like any other over-the-counter drug, alcohol, cigarettes
and anything you don’t want kids to get into," he said.
As states in the U.S. move forward with legalization, they must do a
better job monitoring these events and work on prevention, Wang
said.
"I think moving forward, every state that moves forward with
legalization, you need to think of these unintended consequences and
think how you’re going to address them," said Wang.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/HjQ8dI Pediatrics, online August 14, 2017.
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