Two doctors from Colorado published a paper in the journal Clinical Practices and Cases in Emergency Medicine, and they said they worked on a case involving an 11-month-old baby boy who died of a Marijuana overdose. This report is ground-breaking because there has never been any confirmed overdose deaths caused by marijuana.
This is what we know about the victim
The doctors who wrote the report, Thomas Nappe and Christopher Hoyte, stated the baby was the child of two known drug users and they were living in “motel” conditions. Both of the parents used multiple drugs that included marijuana.
The baby was brought to the hospital because of a seizure. The guardians told ER doctors the baby had been lethargic and retching in the days prior to the seizure.
The treating physicians ran a battery of tests and they determined that the baby boy was in good health, despite the seizure. The tests they conducted also looked for both illegal and legal substances in the boy’s system, but the only substance they found was THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana.
The baby’s condition continued to worsen and his nervous system began to shut down. Eventually, his heart stopped and doctors couldn’t revive him. He died an hour after being admitted to the ER. A post-mortem revealed the boy had a heart condition called myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscles.
Myocarditis is a known side effect of marijuana consumption. Based on all of the symptoms and test results, the doctors concluded that the boy had consumed a large amount of marijuana at one time.
Not everybody agrees
However, not everybody is in agreement with the findings of the report. The Miami-Herald reports that Dr. Noah Kaufman said he can’t support the findings of the report.
He, and other critics of the report, say there are too many other factors involved in the case for somebody to definitively say marijuana was the cause of death.
What parents need to understand
Children are at risk when it comes to marijuana, but not from the drug as much as from the packaging. Edibles can easily be consumed by children.
The best way to prevent children from being exposed to high levels of marijuana is to keep edibles out of their reach. According to the Reno-Gazette Journal, Colorado has already enacted limitations on how marijuana edibles can look and be packaged. The edibles cannot be in the shape of animals, people, or fruit.
Also, marijuana use in children is far from being a medical crisis. Dr. Hoyte, one of the report’s authors, said: “We’re far more concerned about opioids in that case of a kid getting really sick than we are of marijuana.”
