Five children ate drug-laced edibles at their elementary school in Northwest D.C. on Wednesday and were taken to a hospital, a principal said.
DC Fire and EMS was called to Key Elementary School, on Dana Place NW.
Administrators learned that “a student brought gummies containing an unidentified controlled substance to school and shared them with several other students in the 5th grade,” a letter to families said.
Students “began to feel unwell” and went to see the school nurse. Medics were called to assess the students and determined they had ingested a drug. School officials called students’ families, and five children were taken to a hospital for monitoring. Information was not released on the severity of the children's symptoms or if they knew what they had eaten.
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A school official asked families to remind their children not to eat unfamiliar foods or substances. The school will hold “age-appropriate conversations around substance use awareness and prevention” with fifth grade students, they said.
The number of children who accidentally ate marijuana-laced edibles rose sharply over five years as marijuana became legal in more places, according to a study published earlier this year. In nearly a quarter of reported cases, children wound up hospitalized, an analysis in the journal Pediatrics found.
