Thousands more pets are getting sick from accidentally eating marijuana every year
A few days ago, I arrived home to find my beloved 12-year-old dog in a semi-comatose state. She couldn’t move her back legs. She flinched when I touched her elsewhere. She was “out of it” in a way that almost suggested she might be experiencing a very bad trip.
As it turns out, that’s exactly what was happening. The 16-pound Lulu was suffering from marijuana toxicity, as I learned after rushing her to an emergency vet. The ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center reports that it handled more than 6,200 cases of potential marijuana toxicity in pets in 2021, an increase of 59.5% over the prior year. Similarly, a 2022 survey of 251 veterinarians in North America, published by the non-profit PLOS organization, found that toxicity cases in pets surged after 2018, with the report noting that the “legalization of cannabis use in Canada and the U.S.
Part of the problem, explains Jibran Khokhar, one of the researchers behind the 2022 PLOS survey, is that pets don’t ingest marijuana in the same conscious way as people do. “Humans will grab a joint and they will smoke it at their pace, titrating to the optimal level of effect,” he says. By contrast, your dog may just devour whatever they find, he adds.
Is there a solution to stop the overall surge in toxicity? Needless to say, vets caution pet owners to be mindful about leaving marijuana out in the open where they live. And they encourage owners to keep a close eye when walking their pets, and to train dogs to understand the “leave it” command as a way of avoiding accidental ingestion of harmful substances.
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