Fifth Grader Mistakenly Passes Out Weed Edibles To Classroom Friends

What a New Mexico fifth grader thought was just some harmless candy-sharing turned into a learning experience about drugs, KRQE reported. A small handful of students at Albuquerque School of Excellence inadvertently tried marijuana after one girl mistakenly thought her parents’ medical marijuana edibles were candy.

The incident reportedly happened on Jan. 11 before that day’s classes started at the Albuquerque school. A girl brought in edible gummies belonging to her parents and passed them around to her friends. She ate “three or four” pieces of the edible substance while her friends each had one piece.

The school posted about the incident on its Facebook page Thursday, urging parents to be careful with edibles and not to have conversations about them around their children.

Edibles are considered especially dangerous towards children because they often come in forms that resemble kid-friendly treats, like the aforementioned gummies or brownies. Their enticing appearance combined with the fact that edibles tend to be much more potent than smoking marijuana means they can be dangerous for kids, so much so that Colorado banned weed gummies in October.

Marijuana is legal in 29 American states, either in medicinal or recreational form. New Mexico only permits the sale of medicinal marijuana. According to Children’s Hospital Colorado, the effects of marijuana can be much more powerful on children than on adults, often leading to trips to the emergency room. Accidental ingestion of weed edibles is supposedly the most common way kids overdose on the substance, as poison control centers in states that have legalized marijuana have reported an increase in accidental overdoses in kids in recent years.