Please join the California Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics – California, Getting It Right from the Start Project at PHI, Youth Forward and 40+ other youth, substance abuse and public health organizations and individuals in supporting AB 1207 (Irwin), the Cannabis Candy Child Safety Act.

As California’s legal cannabis market matures, exposure to cannabis marketing, and the range and popularity of cannabis products, have grown with it. Laws and regulations must also evolve alongside this new market to ensure the safety of our children and youth. However, Prop 64 provisions intended to protect children, including that cannabis products 1) would not be designed to be appealing to children and 2) would be prohibited from being marketed/advertised to persons younger than 21 years old, have not been effectively implemented.

Current regulations have failed to put in place systems to assess and prevent products from being attractive to children or to resemble conventional candy or food typically marketed to kids. Product prohibition has been limited only to those determined to violate these provisions on a case by case basis. The result? The proliferation of hundreds of products in legal commerce with characteristics of candies and foods typically marketed to or known to attract children and youth in their physical form, name, packaging or labeling, often with ten doses in a single soda can or edible bar facilitating overconsumption and adverse experiences.

Our children, youth, parents and schools cannot afford the continued proliferation of cannabis products attractive to children that have already led to:

• Annual cannabis exposures reported to California Poison Control increased from below 200 in 2010 to over 1600 by 2020; 50% involved children, half below age 12; ingestion of gummies, candies, chocolate and drinks increased significantly. In contrast, there were only 16 total reported gummy exposures between 2010 and 2015 vs. 409 in 2020 alone.
• At Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, children under age 10 testing positive for THC quadrupled since 2016, mostly from edibles, of which three quarters were from candies or gummies. Half led to hospitalization and one in ten to intensive care, associated with $15 million in expenditures over the period in just that one hospital, three quarters from MediCal. 
• Nationally, edible cannabis poisonings of children six and under increased 1,375% between 2017 and 2021, growing in severity. Many resulted in intensive care or mechanical ventilation, and even though uncommon, in death.
• Multiple CA school districts experienced incidents of cannabis poisoned children, often in groups, requiring evacuation by ambulance, typically after ingesting products marketed to resemble candies or chips. Schools are also seeing widespread vaping of high THC cannabis products marketed as flavored.

The Cannabis Candy Child Safety Act will implement key measures to protect children and youth by adopting a clear definition of what is “attractive to children,” prohibiting cannabis products, packaging and marketing that is attractive to children or teens, and prohibiting flavored inhaled cannabis products known to hook kids, just as flavored Juul e-cigarettes did. Child exposure to and ingestion of cannabis and its products is neither necessary nor an acceptable by-product of a legal cannabis market. Roughly half of California children are covered by MediCal, so health expenditures for poisonings, substance abuse treatment, emergency room visits, car accidents, and associated mental health treatments come out of public funding. Use by kids can also lead to significant expenditures by the educational system as well as law enforcement. The CA legal cannabis market can flourish without the proliferation of cannabis products that are clearly attractive to children. 

For these reasons I strongly support passage of AB 1207 and request your “aye” vote. Californians are relying on you to protect our children and youth, save public funds and help shape a safer, legal cannabis market.