NO WORRIES IN EATING CANNABIS

Re: "That little joint could kill your child, MD says," June 26.

I would have hoped that it goes without saying that parents should not
leave cannabis within reach of young children, but if a child dies
from cannabis poisoning it will be the first such death in recorded
history.

Whole cannabis is non-toxic and it is physically impossible to fatally
overdose on it. In contrast, dozens of children die from eating
cigarettes and cigarette butts every year. Hundreds more are poisoned
from eating house and garden plants.

Further, whole cannabis is not psychoactive when ingested orally,
unless it is first heated to several hundred degrees for a period of
time or, as your cautionary article mentioned, baked into food.

All the same, a child would have to consume several times its own
weight in cannabis brownies to fatally overdose on cannabinoids, long
after the caffeine, chocolate and sugar consumed reached toxic levels.

Matthew M. Elrod

Victoria