Citation

Ryan SA. Pediatrics 2021; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, American Academy of Pediatrics)

DOI

10.1542/peds.2021-051426

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In October 2018, Canada joined the ranks of a small number of countries throughout the world, as well as 17 states across the United States, in legalizing the use, possession, and sale of nonmedical cannabis products. One year later, Canada amended its Cannabis Act to include the sale of cannabis-containing edibles. In an attempt to reduce unintentional ingestions and minimize the "appeal to youth," Canada also required all cannabis products to display a standardized symbol: a red stop-sign shaped logo containing a cannabis leaf and the word "THC." In addition, all cannabis-containing edibles are required to have tamper-proof and child-resistant packaging, with strict limits on the tetrahydrocannabinol amount present in single packages.

In the current issue of Pediatrics, Yeung et al1 study this large national experiment to evaluate how the legalization of cannabis in Canada has affected emergency department (ED) visit volumes and codiagnosis and coingestion patterns in children and adolescents in urban Alberta. Using the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System database, a national administrative database used to capture all ED and urgent center visits throughout Canada, the authors focused on Calgary and Edmonton area hospitals. All visits for patients 0 to 17 years of age with a cannabis-related primary or secondary International Classification of Diseases diagnostic code were included for the time period of 5 full years before legalization and 17 months postlegalization, the postlegalization period coinciding and ending with the March 1, 2020, lockdown from coronavirus disease 2019. Interrupted time-series analyses provided comparisons of monthly visit volumes over the total time studied; incident-rate ratios of cannabis-related ED and urgent visits and relative risk ratios for the outcomes of diagnostic patterns, unintentional ingestions, and coingestants provided comparisons postlegalization versus prelegalization...

Language: en