Over 60 Jamaican Kids Hospitalized After Eating Cannabis Sweets

More than 60 elementary school children have landed in hospitals in Jamaica on Monday after consuming candy that was laced with cannabis without their knowledge.

According to medics, none of the kids, who range in age from 7 to 12, appear to be in critical condition, Minister of Education and Youth Fayval Williams revealed.

She wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that the candy made the youngsters “vomit and hallucinate,” and that some of the kids were given intravenous drips.

“Over 60 primary school students had to be taken to hospital. Parents, please beware!!” Williams penned. “One little boy said he only had ONE sweetie. That’s how potent this product is.”

Additionally, the minister stated on X that she had visited the hospital where the kids were being treated and that “doctors & nurses are doing all they can to ensure the students recover.”

Williams shared a picture of the candy, which was packaged in a rainbow of hues.

Delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol, often known as delta-8 THC, is a psychoactive compound found in the Cannabis sativa plant, “of which marijuana and hemp are two varieties,” according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website. The ingredient was claimed to be present on the product’s label.

The US agency claims that it has “psychoactive and intoxicating effects.”

In addition, the minister attached a picture of the candy container with the government’s warning on the back: “Keep out of reach of children” and “Not intended for use by anyone under 21 years of age.”

The product’s label clearly stated that the FDA had not approved it.

What took place

“This morning, a lone vendor — no one knows him — came by and sold a product to our boys and girls, and we realized that after eight o’clock, going nine o’clock, they started to show symptoms — vomiting, feeling dizzy, blacking out — so we rushed to the nurse and we contacted the Ministry of Education, the police, and the Ocho Rios Health Centre,” Suzette Barnes-Wilson, Ocho Rios school principal told the Jamaica Observer.

“We got a bus to take our boys and girls to the hospital and thankfully, to God be the glory, they are doing much better now,” Barnes-Wilson said. “It’s assumed that ganja is a part of it… but we leave that for the authorities to tell us exactly what is in that.”

Williams, the education minister, shared a picture of the candy’s rainbow-colored packaging.

The opinion of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association

The law is extremely clear regarding the sale of these drugs and how to prevent children from having access to them, according to Leighton Johnson, president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association. “I think we just need to get back to the point where we enforce the law as it relates to the use of marijuana,” he said to the Observer on Monday night.

According to Johnson, “School administrators have long struggled with this kind of drug abuse among students as young as grade seven, and now we see where it is being consumed by even students at the primary level.”

Cannabis use for adults over the age of 18 was decriminalized in Jamaica in 2015, and possession of up to 2 ounces (56 grams) was reduced to a misdemeanor.