Three third-grade students at a California elementary school were hospitalized last week after one student shared cannabis-infused gummies with classmates, thinking they were candy.
The Jacoby Creek School students were sent to the hospital Thursday when they showed symptoms of intoxication at school after consuming the cannabis edibles, according to the Times-Standard. The school is located in Humboldt County, known for its cultivation of cannabis.
“This was a frightening incident for our entire school community,” Jacoby Creek Principal Melanie Nannizzi said in an email to parents.
Jacoby Creek initially evacuated the classroom and contacted the fire department, worried that the affected students could have been reacting to carbon monoxide exposure. After the school learned that three third-graders had mistakenly eaten cannabis-infused gummies, the other students returned to the classroom.
All three students have been released from the hospital and “are doing well,” Nannizzi told the Times-Standard.
The Arcata Police Department believes one of the students brought the gummies from home unaware that the product was infused with cannabis. Police are still looking into how the child came into possession of the gummies and reminded parents to keep edible cannabis products away from children.
“It’s a friendly reminder to please store them in a safe location away from children because, obviously, they come in candy form,” an Arcata police officer said.
Last month, a study published in the Drug and Alcohol Dependence journal warned that some marijuana edibles packaging looks nearly identical to name-brand candies such as Nerds Rope and snacks like Doritos Nacho Cheese chips, The Daily Wire previously reported.
The only difference on some packaging is “THC” labeled on the bottom of the bag, which stands for tetrahydrocannabinol, the chemical in marijuana that gives people a high, CNN reported. Consuming THC can be harmful to children, which makes the “copycat packaging” so problematic.
In the first six months of 2021, more than 2,500 calls to poison control were related to “young children ingesting illegal cannabis products,” according to New York Attorney General Letitia James. Later that year, James issued a consumer alert to notify the public and protect children from illegal cannabis products that look like candy. CNN reported that, since 2020, multiple children under five years old have been hospitalized after eating edibles from bags that looked like candy or chips.