PHILADELPHIA — It’s a standard safety measure that parents regularly conduct after their children finish trick-or-treating: checking the kids’ Reese’s Pieces and Mars bars and Nerds Ropes to make sure none have been opened or tampered with.
But some Halloween dangers are closer to home — and more likely to occur than the threat of someone maliciously tampering with candy, poison control centers are warning.
Poison hotlines are receiving more calls about kids who have eaten cannabis edibles, which sometimes come in packaging that mimics popular candies and appeals to young kids. And children most often find them in a parent’s or friend’s home, not secreted in their trick-or-treat bags.
“The vast majority of the time it happens in our own homes, when kids get into our own products,” said Anthony Jaworski, a clinical toxicologist at the poison control center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
That’s not to say that parents shouldn’t take precautions with the candy their kids bring home. It’s always safest to sift through your children’s Halloween haul before allowing them to dig in, experts say. But they also want parents to secure potentially dangerous substances already in the home that kids could mistake for candy.
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On a recent Halloween, the New Jersey Poison Control Center and Rutgers New Jersey Medical School helped care for a child who was hospitalized with nausea, vomiting, and difficulty breathing after he swallowed cannabis edibles he found in a babysitter’s coat pocket.
The center’s managing director, Bruce Ruck, has never seen a case of a child ingesting marijuana that had been handed out while trick-or-treating. But he worries about what kids could get into at a time when lots of candy is in the house.
“I am worried about parents or anyone who have [edible cannabis] around their house,” he said. “We worry that the child will see it and assume that it’s like a lot of other things in the house.”
New Jersey’s poison center has fielded 100 calls so far this year for children under 5 who have ingested cannabis.
Most children hospitalized after ingesting cannabis recover within a day or two. Depression of the central nervous system, which can cause slurred speech, coordination trouble, and drowsiness, is the most common side effect, according to a study in the journal Pediatrics that analyzed thousands of cannabis ingestions between 2017 and 2021. More serious symptoms include slowed breathing or heart rate.
Recreational marijuana is legal in New Jersey. It is illegal in Pennsylvania, but residents can buy hemp derivatives like delta-8 THC, said to produce a milder high than delta-9 THC, the main cannabinoid in marijuana.
Delta-8 exists in something of a legal gray area but has historically been subject to fewer regulations than recreational or medical marijuana. Sometimes it’s sold in gas stations and convenience stores. (A new law in New Jersey has banned delta-8 sales outside of licensed dispensaries, and minors can no longer buy it.)
And the packaging of many delta-8 products can resemble popular candies.
“Sometimes the packages look like traditional candies, like Lucky Charms or Nerds,” Jaworski said. “I always say avoid buying these products to begin with.”
“If you do have cannabis products at home, treat them like medicines, and keep them locked away,” he said.
