Another Halloween, Another Child Hospitalized by THC Candy
A 4-year-old collapsed after eating Halloween chocolate in a province that bans marijuana chocolate from its own stores.
A 4-year-old Quebec boy ended up in the hospital after eating Halloween chocolate that his family says contained marijuana. It is the second report in a week of drug-laced Halloween treats reaching small children. It is also a fresh look at what THC candy can do to a child.
Rebeka Lefebvre told CTV News she took her stepson, Mylan, to the hospital last Thursday. He had said the chocolate tasted weird, and he was drooling. A nurse said he seemed OK and sent them home.
On the way out, Mylan fell to the floor, started crying, and his heart rate shot up, Lefebvre said. A hospital urine test detected THC.
“I think it’s appalling that people are capable of doing things like that. It’s not supposed to happen,” she said.
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Lefebvre said she had checked his Halloween haul, and nothing looked out of the ordinary. The Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police, have opened an investigation. Mylan is now recovering at home.
THC candy that Quebec bans from its own stores
Marijuana has been legal across Canada since 2018. Quebec went further than other provinces on edibles. Provincial law bars legal marijuana edibles that are candy, dessert or chocolate. It also bars any edible that appeals to people under 21. The government-run retailer says it “consequently sells none of these products.”
Police have not said where the chocolate came from. It still ended up in a 4-year-old’s trick-or-treat bag.
What Canada’s poisoning data show
Canadian researchers have tracked child poisonings since legalization. Ontario offers the clearest picture. Monthly ER visits for marijuana poisoning in kids under 10 rose ninefold once edibles went on sale, a JAMA Network Open study found. Thirty-nine percent of those visits led to a hospital stay.
A follow-up study in the New England Journal of Medicine compared provinces. Child hospitalizations rose 7.5 times in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, which allowed edible sales. In Quebec, which banned them, hospitalizations still tripled.
The pattern holds in the United States. Recreational drug ingestions among kids under 6 rose 3,307 percent from 2000 to 2024, a BMC Public Health study found. Marijuana edibles made up almost half of all cases. Last week, San Diego police said psilocybin gummies were left out for trick-or-treaters as young as 1. In July, a Texas mother described her own 4-year-old’s poisoning from a THC lollipop.
Lefebvre checked the candy. The problem with THC candy is that it looks like candy.
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