Among adults with children living at home, cannabis use was more common in states with legalized cannabis use. Legalization for recreational and medical use were both linked to elevated prevalence of past-month and daily cannabis use. PSPH Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, study; Columbia Irving Medical Center; and CUNY
Parents Opposed to Pot has tracked child abuse and neglect deaths related to caregiver pot use since the end of 2012, when the first two states voted to legalize marijuana. From news reports, it has found more than 300 such cases. International studies show that more than 60 percent of child abuse and neglect deaths relate to substance abuse. In states that track this problem, marijuana is the substance most often connected to these deaths, at about double the rate of alcohol. See here.
Children age 5 and under have been most affected by cannabis poisonings due to accidental ingestions, often in the form of edibles. See the astonishing statistics on this issue from our page on poisonings.
Children exposed to secondhand marijuana smoke can become allergic to cannabis, which may significantly worsen their asthma or allergy symptoms. Dr. Bryce Hoffman, Allergy and Immunology, National Jewish Health in Denver, Colorado; Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Reuters Health
The researchers found that parents who regularly smoked or vaped marijuana reported that their children experienced more viral respiratory infections in the year prior to the survey as compared to children whose parents did not smoke tobacco or marijuana. Wake Forest School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital Colorado
Children were studied who were hospitalized for bronchiolitis at Children’s Hospital Colorado. Nearly half of the children who were hospitalized had a parent enrolled in a tobacco smoking cessation program and had detectable marijuana metabolites in their urine.
Overall, 45.8% of the children had detectable levels of 11-hydroxy-Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol. Children with positive results for 11-hydroxy-Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol COOH-THC were more likely to have parents who use marijuana daily in the home (smoke marijuana versus other forms of use) and smoke marijuana in another room if the children were around as compared to smoking outside. NCBI American Academy of Pediatrics
More than one in three nonsmokers who live in rental housing are exposed to secondhand smoke. Two out of every five children (including seven out of 10 African-American children) are exposed. American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation (ANRF); Matthew G. Drake, MD; Christopher G. Slatore, MD, MS; National Institute of Drug Abuse and Cancer Research UK
Cadence Boyer, was a second grader who lit up a room and was beloved by everyone who knew her. At 7, “Cadence loved to be in front of a camera, ride her bike and swim.” Washington voted to legalize marijuana in 2012, and cannabis shops opened to the public in summer 2014. That year…
Within seconds I stopped being a parent and mother. I lost my only child, Stephen Mager, on February 14, 1996. All of this happened during noon break on a school day. Stephen was a passenger in a car that was driven by his best friend. He was sitting in the back seat without his seat…
When you bury a child, you die with them. Yet you still wake up each morning and somehow have to function in your “new” normal. I’ve always considered myself as “politically” correct so when marijuana became “medicine,” I didn’t think it would ever affect my life. It’s too late for me and many other parents…
My heart is broken. I taught my son the dangers of peer pressure. I told him action is never justified simply because someone else says it’s okay. On the evening of October 6, 2017, a knock on my front door brought a parent’s worst —a police officer informed me Henry had been in a horrific…
“I couldn’t breathe. I’m prone to asthma attacks, and every time my next door neighbors smoked marijuana in their apartment and on their patio, it irritated my lungs. I would cough so much. I’d throw up and couldn’t breathe.” Marijuana use. I almost died from it, and I wasn’t even the one using! I was…