This post is reprinted with permission from Sue’s Substack, by Sue Rusche.
Raymond E. Bertino, MD, and colleagues at the Universities of Illinois and Wisconsin conducted a study that shows federal changes in marijuana policy have in part produced a 6,386% explosion in cannabis exposures in children under age 6 and a 13,781% escalation in children ages 6-12 from 2000 to 2024.
Data come from America’s Poison Centers that cover 50 states, DC, and all populated territories to which patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers contribute information. Data show that between 2000 and 2009 in the under-age-6 group cannabis exposures remained steady, less than 141 exposures a year.
But the year after the US Justice Department issued the 2009 Ogden Memo, which advised federal prosecutors to stop arresting medical marijuana users in states that legalized the drug for that use, cannabis exposures increased from 132 to 272 in 2013.
That year the US Justice Department issued the Cole Memo, which offered similar advice to federal prosecutors about recreational marijuana in states that legalized that form of the drug. Exposures increased in children under age 6, from 272 to 1,407.
Congress legalized hemp in 2018 and that is when cannabis exposures among the under-6 group exploded from 1,407 in 2018 to 8,430 in 2024!
Cannabis exposures among those ages 6-12 followed the same pattern, from 0 in 2000 to 21 in 2009 to 2,894 in 2024, an increase over 25 years of 13,781 percent!
The study was accepted for publication April 29, 2026 in the Journal of Addiction Medicine. Its authors warn, “Because of the negative effects on children’s health, public health policy adjustments are warranted.”
Indeed they are. Today, June 29, 2026, the US Drug Enforcement Administration hearing begins to move medical and possibly recreational marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, a move President Trump decreed by Executive Order. If DEA allows this to happen, doctors will be able to prescribe drugs the US Food and Drug Administration has not approved. The hearing will continue until July 15.
How many more babies and children will be exposed to marijuana and hemp if cannabis is moved to Schedule III?