DETROIT – Detroit Public Schools Community District Superintendent Nikolai Vitti is calling on Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Mayor Mike Duggan, and others to do something to curb the use of marijuana vape pens and edibles, especially in schools.
Vitti calls for new labeling that identifies the drug-infused candies and funding for detection systems.
“This year alone, this school year 23-24, we’ve had almost 750 incidents of either marijuana edibles or vaping,” said Vitti.
The incidents have occurred over 50 times this school year alone, where a Detroit Public School Community District student has taken a marijuana edible while in school.
Officials said that all 50 times, EMS had been called due to the students’ reactions after eating the infused candy, causing them to be rushed for medical care.
Vitti told Local 4 that the edibles have become a massive problem in the state.
“After the edible hits the student with the marijuana in the brain, the student will have a panic attack, and they’ll start hallucinating, so it’s either screaming or yelling and losing sense of reality,” Vitti. “If a child is accessibly erratic, yelling, screaming, attacking, then we need to call 911 because, for one, we need additional support in order to bring the child down.”
Vitti is calling on local and state officials to step in to help as edibles are available all over, including in the privacy of their homes, as parents buy them for self-use.
The bad thing is when their children find them, take them to school, and pass them around to their friends, who eat them.
According to Vitti, the youngest child to get sick was a second grader.
Once a week with children as young as second or third grade taking edible and having extreme hallucinations,” Vitti said.