First up: recent reports, courtesy of one state’s poison hotline, confirm that of more than one thousand incidents of cannabis overexposure, the majority involved children under the age of 12. Nine out of ten of those cases necessitated a trip to the hospital for medical care.

That wasn’t supposed to happen. During the long debate over legalization, discussion centered on whether teenagers would get access to their parents’ (or their friends’ parents’) cannabis stash. I don’t recall much concern expressed over possible access by much younger children in the household.

But we should have anticipated that the marketing geniuses behind commercial Big Pot would come up with the idea of offering edibles that closely resembled the popular sweeties of the day.

There was already a role model to follow, in the form of those colorful detergent pods that even then were sending kids to the ER with cases of poisoning.

I don’t know why we thought cannabis would be different, given the natural momentum of the pot marketplace towards greater and greater THC content.

That trend continues, by the way.

Here’s something for parents from the University of Virginia.

Another issue that came up during the debate: whether legal, commercially available cannabis products, sold in stores with few restrictions, would lead to an overall increase in the number of users or in their usual daily consumption.

Advocates vigorously disputed the idea, a few even claiming that overall use of cannabis would decline as a result of legalization.

That made no sense to me. Seemed logical that whenever something that had been illegal was made legal and therefore widely available, more people were likely to try it, not fewer. And those who already used the drug on a regular basis would probably feel okay about using more of it.

You’re wrong, I was told by an audience member at an evening talk. People are fascinated by cannabis because it’s illegal. Once that changes, the man claimed, pot will lose the luster of the forbidden, and become just another product.

Apparently he was mistaken. A recent analysis of “..more than 55,000 adults based on their participation in panels between 2013 to 2022 found that after legalization of cannabis, their monthly usage rose 3.9%…”

As for the total number of cannabis users, that’s increased by an estimated seven to eight million.

Take any potentially addictive drug, eliminate most of the barriers to using it, and watch what happens.