“We get calls about this daily. Absolutely,” Doyon said. “There was even a day two weeks ago, where we had five children in different hospitals in the state of Connecticut, all with edible marijuana exposures. Five at the same time—that was a record for us.”

Cannabis can be made into gummies, chocolate, hard candy, chips, lollipops and more.

Now that Connecticut has made the possession of recreational cannabis legal as of July 1, Doyon fears that the number of calls to CPCC for cannabis exposures will only increase: “The numbers are going to go up.”  Her anxieties are not unfounded; data from poison control centers across the country substantiate Doyon’s predictions.

A new study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that regions with legalized recreational cannabis reported higher rates of calls to poison control centers for cannabis exposure than in states where recreational use was illegal.

In 2019, cannabis exposure calls per 100,000 residents increased by 48% in areas where cannabis use was legal. The study found a call rate of 4.36 per 100,000 people in legalized regions and a rate of 2.95 calls per 100,000 for cannabis exposure in states where recreational cannabis was illegal.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), extreme doses of THC, the primary psychoactive compound in cannabis, are not likely to cause a fatal overdose. However, THC consumption can result in “extreme confusion, anxiety, paranoia, panic, fast heart rate, delusions or hallucinations, increased blood pressure, and severe nausea or vomiting.”

Doyon said that cannabis is even more toxic for children and leads to gastrointestinal and neurological problems, and often results in admittance to a hospital. She said that it usually takes two days in the hospital for a child to recover. In Connecticut, Doyon said that poisonings from edible cannabis products occur most often in children under age 5 with a peak age of 18 months.

“These are little children … It’s a very normal behavior for very young children and toddlers to put things in their mouth. These little edibles are just ingested by these children. And let’s face it, they do look like candy and there’s usually more than one available so the children get into more than one of them,” Doyon said. “We want them to keep these products away from children, just like we keep cleaning products away from children.”

Cannabis can be made into gummies, chocolate, hard candy, chips and more. Packaging sometimes mimics well-known candy brands like Sour Patch Kids, Starburst and Skittles. Popular homemade edibles include brownies, cookies and other baked goods. To a hungry youngster, these THC-potent products look like tempting snacks.

Connecticut’s new cannabis law includes provisions to deter children from using cannabis products. The law “prohibits cannabis product types that appeal to children” and mandates opaque child-resistant packaging. Additionally, each dose of edibles must be individually wrapped. These regulations will go into effect once recreational sales of cannabis begin in May 2022. Doyon said it is up to the state Department of Public Health (DPH) to implement the guidelines.

“We want child-resistant packaging. We want opaque packaging. We want the edibles to not be attractive to children. No nice colors, no nice shapes, no nice smells, no nice flavors, making [edibles] clear and unappealing would be a great thing,” Doyon said.

Doyon added that individual wrappers for each edible dose will likely be the key to decreasing the number of children who suffer from cannabis poisonings each year and that packaging should clearly label the amount of THC in each dose.

“It makes it much more difficult for children to get into multiple edibles if they are individually wrapped. Little children just don’t have the dexterity to open multiple packages like that in a short period of time,” Doyon said. “We have a lot of evidence to show that when we package things properly to prevent pediatric ingestion, we are successful … No state is doing this right now. We have the opportunity because the regulations are being thought up and written up as we speak to impact the packaging.”

Doyon said that in preparation for Connecticut’s cannabis legalization, the CPCC contacted other states with recreational markets. She said that the CPCC staff is undergoing training and modifying policies now that recreational cannabis is legal. Doyon advised users to keep cannabis products locked away, and added that people should not eat edibles in front of children who might try to mimic the behavior. If a child — or anyone — overdoses on cannabis products, call the poison control center immediately at 1-800-222-1222, Doyon said.

“We have true experts answering the phone, and they will guide you to the best of their ability as to what the next steps should be,” Doyon said. “We are interested in saving lives.”

Advocates, including a group of adoptive parents, told the legislature’s Committee on Children that a proposed bill that would prohibit DCF from “requesting, recommending or requiring” that parents relinquish their custodial rights when seeking mental health treatment for their children is needed to stop a practice known as ‘trading custody for care.’ The bill, drafted by state Rep. Rosa Rebimbas, R-Naugatuck, was prompted by an October C-HIT story that described DCF’s use of “uncared for” custody petitions against parents who could not manage their children at home and insisted on specialized residential care.

In testimony Tuesday, DCF Commissioner Joette Katz said the agency resorts to taking over custody only in rare cases in which parents refuse to take their children home from inpatient settings or “will not cooperate” with clinician-recommended in-home or community-based treatment services.

Christine Stuart Photo.

DCF Deputy Commissioner Kristina Stevens and DCF Commissioner Joette Katz testify at hearing before the Committee on Children.

“We disagree with the notion that DCF requires parents to completely relinquish custody of their children” to receive suitable behavioral health care, Katz said. She acknowledged that the agency has sharply reduced the number of children it places in residential treatment.

Maureen O’Neill-Davis, leader of a parents’ group called Family Forward Advocacy CT that is lobbying for the proposed bill, said parents seeking intensive residential care should not have to give up rights to their children. She and other parents described being told by DCF and court workers that the only way to access specialized out-of-home care was to relinquish custody. Most of the parents said they had exhausted in-home services provided through DCF and were left on their own to manage children who were a threat to the safety of siblings and other family members.

“We don’t want to give up our children,” said O’Neill-Davis, of Torrington. “(But) we are told that if you forfeit custody, they will get your child the care they need.”

O’Neill-Davis said DCF has a responsibility to provide high-level mental health care to unstable children that should remain separate from its role as a child-protection agency. The parents’ group has alleged that financial considerations are prompting the custody-for-care pressure, as DCF reduces funding for children not legally in its care and limits residential placements. DCF officials have denied that funding plays any role.

DCF has said that “uncared for/specialized needs” petitions removing parents’ custody are used only as a last resort, in cases where parents cannot provide appropriate care for their children.

Judicial department data show the state has used the petitions to take custody of more than 860 children over five years – or an average of three children a week.

Steven Hernandez, executive director of the Connecticut Commission on Women, Children and Seniors, said the agency has heard from parents who have been “coerced into giving up their parental rights” in order to secure residential mental health care. He urged the committee not to buy into “mythologies” that difficult parents were to blame.

“Sometimes it is expedient to have a family that is asking too many questions out of the way” of decision-making, he said. “There are many causes that could lead down that expedient road.”

Several parents who support the proposed bill said a key problem underlying the custody issue is that DCF’s in-home treatment services are not sufficient to help severely troubled children. Tracy E. Schulz, a retired state Capitol police officer from Manchester, said she and her husband were unable to access appropriate services for their grandson through DCF’s Voluntary Services program, which provides mental health services. The program offered “many meetings that were fruitless, visits to our home that were unnecessary, as our grandson was in a sub-acute care facility, and no offer of services that we were asking for,” she said.

Christine Stuart Photo.

Rep. Diana Urban, committee co-chair.

Katz said DCF provides an array of mental health services to thousands of children not in state custody and is abiding by “national best practices” in relying on in-home and community-based care. The department approves facility-based care for a “small number of children” in the Voluntary Services program, she said.

DCF lawyer Barbara Clare insisted that the agency would never require parents to fully terminate their parental rights in order to secure care. She said the custody issue was usually triggered by parents, who, “because of their own issues… they simply want the child put someplace and not to come home until they’re fixed. . . That’s not how treatment works,” she added.

Custody only comes into play in a “tiny, tiny percentage of cases where there is disagreement” over whether the child needs outpatient or residential treatment, she said.

State Child Advocate Sarah Eagan said her office supports the proposed bill as a way to prevent the filing of custody petitions “due solely to the child’s specialized mental health or disability support needs.” She noted that state law specifically provides that “commitment to… (DCF) shall not be a condition for receipt of services or benefits” from the agency.

“It is imperative that state systems do not inadvertently require children and families to submit to juvenile court proceedings where there are no concerns of parental unfitness or medical neglect,” Eagan said. “Urgent solutions need to be found so that parents can appropriately access needed mental health and developmental support services.”

State Rep. Noreen Kokoruda, R-Durham, said she was concerned that connecting custody to care, in any way, would “deter people who really do need help, but don’t want to give up custody of their children.”