Marijuana and marijuana concentrates can be very potent, and that’s become a problem, especially when little kids get hold of cannabis and consume it.

According to the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a report released July 2023, marijuana-involved emergency room visits for people under age 25 drastically increased since 2019.

This new data is compatible with data showing marijuana-involved emergency room visits increased for people aged 0-14 years prior to 2019, apparently correlated with increasing cannabis legalization.

And although the COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with increases in drug and alcohol use for some youths, cannabis-involved emergency department (ED) visits began increasing significantly several years before the start of the pandemic among all age groups except ages 15–24 years.

The report states during the COVID pandemic there were massive increases in emergency-room cannabis-related visits among children under ten years old, people aged 11-14, and especially among females aged 11-14.

What the report doesn’t explain is why the big increase, and what exactly are these emergency room visits really all about.

In some cases, a “cannabis-related emergency room visit” is just a situation in which a person is a patient in an emergency room who has used cannabis or mentions it. Due to anti-marijuana bias, if a person comes in for injuries suffered in an accident, for example, emergency room personnel will blame the accident on marijuana if the patient admits to having used it recently.

So the coding of an emergency room visit as “cannabis related” doesn’t always mean cannabis was definitely a cause or the main cause of why the person went to the emergency room.

On the other hand, there are cases involving high-dose marijuana, especially in the form of edibles, when a very young person ingests enough THC or CBD to knock an adult off their feet.

This can produce serious symptoms including nausea, dizziness, sedation, low blood pressure, panic attacks, depersonalization, memory loss, hallucinations, depression, suicidality, heart problems, and in rare cases, loss of consciousness.

Fortunately, cannabis is a not a killer substance like alcohol. A person can overdose on a small amount of alcohol and end up comatose or dead. Cannabis does not shut down life-sustaining processes that way.

I’ve overdosed on marijuana edibles, dabs, concentrates before but never got anywhere close to actually dying, even though I may have felt like dying, lol.

Problem is, for novice users and kids, especially a toddler who finds and eats a bunch of high-THC gummies, marijuana can be very scary.

Check out what happens when an adult police officer and his wife consume marijuana brownies…

Other marijuana overdoses leading to emergency room visits are caused by use of dabs, marijuana edibles, and other super-potent cannabis extracts.

Dabs and similar-strength concentrates greatly disrupt brain and body chemical signaling, may trigger mental health episodes, impair physical and cognitive performance.

They also habituate you to incredibly high doses of THC, leading to tolerance and addiction syndrome and the eventual inability to feel the marijuana high because you’re just too saturated with marijuana already.

Of course we all know not to leave any cannabis out in the open in any place where an unauthorized person can get hold of it.

That’s just not smart if you have kids or teens around, but in general, it’s best to keep your cannabis under lock and key, refrigerated, off limits to everyone but you.

We also want to honestly share with young people and even adults that chronic use of dabs or other high-potency product can lead to dependence and burnout, or worse.

If a percentage of marijuana consumers who have young people in their lives continue to be careless, so that scientists and government can prove significant levels of harm to children and young adults linked to marijuana legalization, some states will choose to strictly regulate high-potency cannabis products, and increase penalties for adults whose children are medically endangered or otherwise getting in trouble with marijuana.

Let’s all have fun with our marijuana, but not in a way that endangers people:)