KENNEWICK, Wash. –
The call volume to Poison Control Centers is growing as more and more young children are getting sick after mistaking marijuana edibles for a snack.
Steve Lee one of the owners of Green2Go tells me Washington State has specific rules they have to follow when selling Marijuana edibles.
“You can’t use cartoons, or animals, or creatures, or characters or stuff that would appeal to children on packaging at all. That there are very specific rules,” said Lee.
Those rules haven’t helped the rising rate of children eating edibles. According to the Medical Journal of Pediatrics, in 2021, 1,300 percent more children under six years old ate marijuana edibles compared to 2017.
Edibles packaged to look like candy or cookies get the attention of kids, who are unaware of the risk and can sometimes eat several at a time.
Lee says in Washington there’s a very strict child-proof packaging law.
The state law also states that all edibles have to be individually packaged within the bag.
Beven Briggs is a practicing Nurse Practitioner and says you can’t predict how much THC. the active ingredient in cannabis is in an edible.
“You might have an idea but there’s no way to predict how much they’re getting, so it makes it very difficult,” said Briggs.
Briggs and Lee both say the best way to keep your kids away from your edibles is to put them in a lockbox and out of reach of children.
“They really should be locked up, so that the only way you have access to it is very intentionally you the key out or enter a code into a safe for whatever your locking mechanism is,” said Briggs.
Lee says “Little cash boxes that you use at yard sales work exceptionally well. They also sell pizza delivery cash bags.”
Lee has partnered with the Department of Health several times to do a lockbox giveaway.
A statewide program that will give out lockboxes free of charge.
