Michigan’s marijuana industry is required to use child-resistant packaging and prohibit the sale of edibles that look like candy. But industry experts and regulators say it’s still too easy to buy copycat candy products.
- Michigan’s poison control center got 387 reports of kids under age 6 ingesting or being exposed to cannabis in 2024, a record high for the state.
- While most kids do well with treatment, poison control data suggest 105 were hospitalized, with 23 requiring critical care.
- Experts say parents need to lock up marijuana products at home. Some local health departments have given away free lockboxes. The industry also points to the increase of unregulated edibles from unlicensed retailers.
Brandon and Sarah Reinkensmeyer were getting a relaxing, child-free weekend away. They were traveling out of state for a friend’s wedding, while Sarah’s mom was home with their two kids in Birmingham, Michigan.
And then, on Saturday, they got a call from the hospital.
“I don’t know if it was a nurse who called, or if it was CPS who called us,” Brandon said. “Because CPS got involved at the hospital.”
Their 8-year-old daughter, Olivia, was sick. She’d come home from her brother’s T-ball game at an elementary school in Troy, eaten an entire box of mac and cheese, and then fallen asleep in the middle of the day.
Now her breathing had slowed, and she “was not really functional, just like kind of out of it,” Brandon recalled her grandmother telling them. Then her grandmother had taken her to the hospital, where they’d discovered Olivia’s blood oxygen was low, too.
Then the hospital asked Brandon the last question he was expecting: “‘Are you aware that your daughter has THC in her system?’”
That made no sense. Brandon and Sarah Reinkensmeyer don’t use marijuana – it’s not in their home. Sarah’s mom, who was watching the kids, doesn’t use it either. So how had Olivia wound up with so much THC in her system that she was being admitted to the hospital?
“We’re like, ‘What are you talking about? This is crazy,’” Brandon said.
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