Dad Charged After 10-Year-Old Overdoses on Marijuana Candy Left in Car

The number one rule of pot consumption is to keep it the heck away from kids, especially if it’s some sort of edible product that looks like something a child might want to eat. A New York dad is now facing charges after his 10-year-old found and ate some marijuana candy he found in the car.

According to PEOPLE, it happened over the weekend. A 10-year-old boy was at the park with his father when it started raining, so the kid ran ahead to the car to get out of the rain. While he was there, he found a bag of candy near his dad’s seat and decided to eat some. Fortunately he only ate two pieces or so, because it didn’t actually taste very good. But it turns out that the bag of candy was actually a THC-infused edible, and the poor kid later felt very sick.

At first the father did not know what was going on and thought it was just a normal illness, but he took the kid to the emergency room as soon as the boy mentioned eating the candy.

The boy was treated and released and should be totally fine now, but when a 10-year-old is in the emergency room for a marijuana overdose, the police are notified right away. The father was reportedly arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a child, which is a misdemeanor. The investigation is still underway, and he may also face other charges.

The bag of candy was reportedly a package of FlavRX pink lemonade flavor belts, a gummy sour candy that is pink and infused with THC. It really does just look like any old candy, assuming one is too young to really know what marijuana is or that sometimes it’s put in candy. The bag is marked with a marijuana leaf and says it contains THC, but unless a 10-year-old were savvy enough to know what those words meant, he’d probably just assume it was regular candy. So he did what any kid would do, and he ate some of it.

The boy’s father reportedly told police that he’d just borrowed the car, and that the candy didn’t belong to him. Whether or not that was true, he did admit that he knew the candy was there. He told police he’d tried to hide it so his kid wouldn’t see it, but he was clearly unsuccessful at that. In retrospect, he probably should have thrown it away or put it someplace safer than hiding it under the seat. Because it really did look like normal candy, and a kid left alone with a bag of candy is going to eat some of it.

Cars are not a safe place to store marijuana edibles, because people will find them and eat them. Not that long ago an adult man left a plate of pot brownies in the back of his parents’ car, and his own dad ate them all by accident. Marijuana edibles should always be stored safely and securely,  especially when there are children around, and being left in the back seat of a car does not count.

(Image: iStock / AlbyDeTweede)