Should You Tell Your 7-Year-Old About Your Weed Gummies?

The signs of pediatric cannabis poisoning that parents usually notice first are sleepiness and strangeness. Their child is acting off, parents say. Their kid seems slowed, confused. Some of them vomit. Some can’t stay awake, or sit up, or support their own weight when trying to walk. Some kids and teens skip these relatively benign symptoms and sink into psychosis, ranting and screaming and fighting paranoid delusions while parents look on helplessly. In the most terrifying cases, the central nervous system is depressed so profoundly that the child slips into a coma or the automatic process of breathing breaks down, requiring a ventilator. The brain’s so-called seizure threshold may also be lowered, resulting in convulsions that can send kids to the ICU.

As marijuana has been legalized or decriminalized across the country, there has been a 1,375 percent increase among children under 6 years old in accidental edible-ingestion cases like these. In the past year alone, 9,249 incidents of pediatric edible-cannabis poisonings were reported, 55 percent of which affected kids 5 years old or younger. These cases involve inadvertent ingestion of a THC-infused edible (or several) that a small child mistakes for regular food. The physicians I spoke to say the most common formulation is gummies — they’re cute, familiar, and often sold in colorful, kid-enticing packaging. Children evidently find nicotine products just as alluring: Vapes are also often colorful and kid attracting, and many, especially those that are draw activated, don’t require much manual dexterity to operate. And what does a canister of nicotine pouches, like Zyn, look like to a kid if not a tin of candy or gum? As with cannabis, nicotine poisoning can lead to vomiting, respiratory depression, seizure, and coma. Between 2010 and 2023, 134,663 nicotine-ingestion incidents were reported in kids under age 6.

“It’s a serious public-health concern,” said Dr. Rachel Levene, a pediatric emergency-medicine physician at Mount Sinai. Ninety-one percent of pediatric edible-cannabis exposures occur in the child’s home.

As the federal government flounders with efforts to make these products less appealing and accessible to kids, two more personal, human questions emerge: Why do such a staggering number of households with young children have these substances within easy reach, and why don’t more parents acknowledge to their kids the truth about what they are — and why they should be avoided?

It has been at least a decade — maybe longer — since substance-use culture and parenting culture became not-so-subtly intertwined. Google “wine mom” and behold the array of tackiness on offer. Consider the weirdly high number of beer names that contain the word dad. If THC seems too foreboding, parents can partake of Mom Grass CBG pre-rolls or Dad Grass CBD pre-rolls stashed in a candy-heart tin. The winking acknowledgment between parents that braving the day involves — even requires — popping a gummy or limping along until wine o’clock is so familiar it’s become cliché. Yet we don’t view this lowercase-d dependence as substance use because we have a substance excuse. Life with small children is exhausting, relentless, often tedious. How else could we possibly survive it?

Yet for all the ease with which we imbibe, a paradox lies at the heart of our cultural view of substances, particularly marijuana. Despite having collectively decided it’s the most innocuous of drugs, we harbor a puritanical streak about its use, imbuing it with a stigma — a residual illicitness — that we don’t ascribe to other substances. In many places, it’s as legal as a glass of Pinot. But which would you consume in front of your child without a second thought, and which do you save for bedtime? Would you buy a six-pack of IPAs with your child present? Sure. But when you come home from a trip to the dispensary, do you answer honestly if your kid asks what’s in the bag? Do you pop a Zyn or hit your vape in front of them or out of their view? Secrecy like this may be at the heart of the growing accidental-ingestion problem.

I spoke to a California mom of two — let’s call her Sarah — who told me about a recent mishap with her 11-year-old daughter. “I have a huge sweet tooth,” Sarah said, “and my kids know I keep candy around the house.” So it wasn’t much of a surprise to Sarah’s daughter when she looked in her mom’s bedside drawer while watching TV and found gummies in a colorful tin. (The tin featured an illustration of a sunset, in inviting hues of pink, yellow, and teal, and a tiny weed-leaf icon, the meaning of which many kids likely wouldn’t grok.) It was intuitive to open — unlike, say, a wine bottle, a beer bottle, or even, to some extent, a can of beer. Sarah’s daughter ate one of the gummies, failing to note the label’s minuscule written warning that they each contained 5 mg of THC. Luckily, she escaped with only a giddy spell and a loopy demeanor at dinner that evening, but it was telling that she was aghast when Sarah explained what the gummies were. She had no idea her mother used cannabis; she asked if it was illegal to possess the gummies at all. “We drink socially in front of them,” Sarah said of herself and her husband. “But we never use weed in front of them.” No one is arguing that parents should be taking bong rips at playdates to demystify weed to kids, but could there be such a thing as appropriate transparency? Until this accidental ingestion, Sarah hadn’t quite considered that while she had made it clear to her young children that the alcohol she keeps in her home is only for adults, she had not shared the same message about edibles and nicotine.

In speaking to numerous parents about this question, I found some who were already being somewhat honest with their children. “We want our son to know what they are,” one mom told me of her husband’s stash of edibles. “We tend toward harm reduction versus abstinence. We stressed that eating a whole gummy will send him to the ER, like drinking too much.” A dad of three told me that he keeps his stash out of reach but that he wouldn’t worry too much if his kids found it because he and his wife haven’t been any more secretive about its presence than they have about drinking alcohol. When I asked what he actually said to his kids, he told me, “They’ve seen the container we keep it in, and we told them it wasn’t for them — that it’s like the medicine in the medicine cabinet.” Another parent told me she made the same comparison and stated, perhaps not entirely honestly, “This is medicine.” Then she stored it in a container that was taped closed and put a Mr. Yuk sticker on it. Even with some openness about the presence of cannabis in the house, all of these parents still hide their supply, just in case — a tactic experts say is critical for safety.

But other parents I spoke to indicated that they hid their cannabis but didn’t believe in communicating about it — a strategy more prone to error. One mom built a hidden compartment in her laundry room that “looks like part of the cabinet that doesn’t open,” she said. “The kids have no idea it’s there — it holds my vibrators and drugs.” The mother of a toddler and a newborn said she keeps her stash on a shelf six feet off the ground in her garage; another mom said she keeps hers on the tallest shelf in her closet. Other parents I interviewed told me they have opted for both a low-security, low-communication combo, not talking with their kids about substances in the house and not doing much to hide them, relying on their faith in their children not to eat whatever they may come across. A mom of twins who told me she keeps her gummies in her bedside drawer, just as Sarah did, assured me that “my kids ask permission for everything, including dumb things. They don’t snoop.”

Of course, that’s what plenty of parents think — until it happens to them. Paradoxical feelings about marijuana (it’s totally benign! It’s a huge secret!) came more clearly into view when I asked emergency-medicine physicians how parents react in accidental cannabis-ingestion cases, which typically force physicians to run what Levene called “million-dollar workups” to figure out why a kid is lethargic, nauseous, or agitated, all symptoms that could indicate just about anything. Many parents are initially unaware their kids have gotten into the stash, only finding out once their urine-toxicology results come back, said Dr. Ethan Wiener, division chief of pediatric emergency medicine at NYU Langone Health. Mostly, Wiener said, these parents are terrified, mortified, and almost always shocked that it occurred — and the shame of their role in the incident, as well as the threat of getting in trouble, looms overhead. “They’re like, ‘I can’t believe this happened, but it happened. I know you may have to call somebody. We just want to make sure our kid is okay,’” he said. I asked Wiener, “Well, do you call somebody — namely, Child Protective Services?” No standard recommendation exists for accidental-ingestion cases; the decision to involve child-welfare services often comes down to hospital policy or the physician’s discretion. I also asked whether he thinks parents would worry as much about legal consequences if their kid drank a cleaning product from under the sink.

I could tell he’d given this some thought. “This is a legal substance,” Wiener said, “and it should be kept out of reach. That’s true of Tylenol. That’s true of Grandma’s blood-pressure medication. That’s true of cleaning products. All the different things kids can get into that can cause harm but are perfectly legal to have in the house. But there’s a value judgment placed on cannabis that’s different.” He told me he does not automatically alert CPS, though in severe cases, he may be more likely to make the call. “I’ll be honest,” he said. “I struggle with this. Is any exposure the same? If, just by virtue of happenstance, this kid got more, this got less, should it be any different? Often, the response is based on the magnitude of the exposure, the physiologic consequences. I think it’s an open question as to whether that’s the right approach.”

Levene will often involve the hospital’s social workers, and they will come to a decision on next steps as a team. “If there’s an exposure,” she said, “we involve our social-work team to try and identify if this was a one-off.” The team may decide to set up a home visit, a virtual check-in, or a follow-up with the family’s pediatrician for additional support services. Dr. Michael Alfonzo, a pediatric emergency physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital and Weill Cornell Medicine, said he typically sees no need to automatically call CPS. “The hazard of being too punitive,” he said, “is that someone will avoid care out of fear of getting in trouble, to the detriment of the child. If appropriate steps are taken to seek the well-intentioned care of the child, it’s not on my to-do list to get someone in legal trouble for what is clearly an accident.”

Emerging literature echoes this opinion. An article published last month in the Journal of Addiction Medicine argues that the automatic reporting of accidental cannabis-ingestion cases in children is a potentially grievous mistake with “the potential to waste scarce resources, harm families, and worsen current inequities in CPS reporting.” A small study published last December found that in cases of accidental ingestion of a toxic substance by children, non-Hispanic Black patients were referred to CPS 16.6 percent of the time, while non-Hispanic white patients were referred just 3.2 percent of the time.

THC is not going away. Alcohol’s not going away. Nicotine is not going away,” said Wiener. “So how do we ensure that people have the information they need to make sure their environment is safe for their children?”

Levene said decriminalization and legalization are not her primary focus, even if they have spurred the increase in accidental ingestion. “What I am advocating for is public-education campaigns and child-resistant packaging,” she said. As a July 2025 JAMA Health Forum report put it, “Decreasing the recognizability of the labels and childproofing marijuana edible packages are … critical tools.”

In 2022, Dr. Danielle Ompad, a professor of epidemiology at NYU’s School of Global Public Health, co-authored a report on the prevalence of “copycat and look-alike edible-cannabis product packaging.” She has seen wrapping that was identical to, or almost indistinguishable from, that of foods like Doritos and Nerds Rope, some of which had only subtle indications the product contained cannabis that a child would likely miss. To avoid attracting kids, the wrapping for edibles, she said, should adhere to what she called a “government cheese” aesthetic: “White package. Black writing. Super-generic.”

In recent years, some states with legal cannabis markets, such as Colorado and California, have begun to mandate child-resistant containers, standardized warning symbols, and clear THC labeling, while banning packaging that imitates popular candies. In 2017, Colorado banned marijuana edibles shaped like gummy bears and other animals, people, and fruits. On the nicotine side, the FDA and FTC issued warning letters to e-cigarette companies whose flavored vapes were sold in packaging nearly identical to juice boxes, candy wrappers, and cookies; in 2018, 17 manufacturers, distributors, and retailers stopped selling products that looked like kid-friendly snacks. And just this month, the FDA begged nicotine-pouch manufacturers to make their packaging child-resistant. But there is no federal regulation on edibles packaging since, federally, cannabis is still illegal — it’s legal only at the state level, and states’ rules on packaging vary greatly.

Until edibles producers and manufacturers of nicotine products step up and blandify their packaging, “harm reduction,” to quote one of the moms I spoke with, is a parent’s best bet.

First, parents must accept that accidental poisoning can indeed happen to their kids if they don’t store their products in secure, age-appropriate ways, said Ompad. “Little kids are nosy as hell,” she said. “They go snooping for things. That’s just what they do.” It must also be impressed upon parents that seeking medical help is of vital importance if their child shows symptoms of substance exposure, according to all the doctors I spoke to. In other words, now is not the time to worry about CPS, and child poisoning is not a situation you should attempt to manage alone. “Poison control is available nationally,” said Alfonzo. “The phone number is 1-800-222-1222.” From 2009 to 2023, one person under 20 years old died from accidental cannabis poisoning, according to America’s Poison Centers.

Talking to kids about the cannabis and nicotine in their home is ideal, but if a parent isn’t ready to do so, security is paramount. Hiding these substances isn’t enough; they need to be locked up securely. A longtime Wu-Tang Clan fan, Ompad coveted Method Man’s lockable $420 wooden stash box before it sold out, but she advised that a $50 Amazon document safe will do just fine. The bottom line? “Lock your shit up,” she said. “Just lock it up. It’s the responsibility of the producers, the manufacturers, and the sellers, whether licensed or unlicensed, to make sure their packaging doesn’t appeal to kids. But it’s the responsibility of the consumer to make sure their stuff doesn’t get into those kids’ hands.”