It’s that time of year again. The leaves soon will be changing, football season is upon us, and the young children are back at elementary school learning… And eating weed brownies on the playground? Yes, you read that right, unfortunately.
Last week, two students at the K-6 Lincoln Elementary School were sent to a hospital after eating cannabis on the playground. According to a letter from the Salt Lake City School District, a sixth-grade student brought the brownies to the playground before school and sold or shared some of them with classmates.
Det. Wilking of the Salt Lake City Police Department told local Fox affiliate Fox 13 KSTU that the girl distributed the brownies to seven total students at the school. All of the students knew the brownies had weed in them. The story claims that two of the seven students ‘began to feel ill after ingesting them’. While those two students did, in fact, end up being hospitalized, there is no mention as to why. Giving children this young weed brownies is certainly a bad idea, as well as illegal, but there is little to no evidence to support a notion that they would be harmed or could overdose. There is also no mention of how the other five students felt after ingesting the brownies.
The school district is investigating the incident. School officials say that disciplinary or legal action will be taken where appropriate. The parents of all children involved have already been contacted, although there is no news of whether legal action will be taken. School officials said these events appear to be an isolated incident. The principal sent a letter to concerned parents.
“We encourage you to also take this opportunity to speak with your children about the dangers associated with drug use,” the press release stated. “As the principal, I met with our sixth grade students today to review the various problems related to the use of drugs. Our counselor will also be working with our sixth grade teachers to plan and implement lessons that build the necessary social skills that will help our students choose to be drug-free and make other healthy lifestyle choices.”
Some parents of Lincoln Elementary School students were surprised to hear about the pot brownies from Fox 13, with one mother stating that usually these types of things don’t happen until high school. What should surprise no one who has even half a pulse on the age-old stigma attached to cannabis was that some mainstream news outlets jumped at this as an opportunity to push antiquated D.A.R.E.-like propaganda.
And of course, the letter to parents included two anti-cannabis links from the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids. One is about marijuana in general and one is a “kit” for speaking to children about marijuana.
Speaking of school, here’s a lesson in parenting 101: do not let your kids get your weed brownies. This is exactly the type of stupidity that gives prohibitionists undeserved leverage. Medical and legal recreational cannabis packaging is usually hard to open and clearly states that users must be 21 or over, for reasons like this one.
