Health authorities say at least 85 people, including eight children, suffered accidental marijuana intoxication after eating pizza, sandwiches and garlic bread from a Wisconsin restaurant.
Seven of them were rushed to the local hospital with symptoms ranging from dizziness to anxiety. None of them knew they were consuming pot, and investigators, after checking for carbon monoxide exposure, tracked down the source to an unexpected culprit.
Authorities with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the problems began when cooks at Famous Yeti’s Pizza in a suburb of Madison, Wisconsin, ran out of canola oil last October.
Instead of buying more oil, the restaurant workers grabbed cooking oil from a shared commissary area also used by a company that makes marijuana edibles, officials said.
“The owner initially thought the oil was plain canola oil but later realized it might have been infused with THC,” federal health officials concluded.
Marijuana is illegal in Wisconsin, but the edibles company was extracting and concentrating the delta-9 THC compound from hemp, investigators said. Hemp is a low-THC version of marijuana, and thus legal in Wisconsin, even though both marijuana and hemp come from cannabis plants.
“Regulations regarding practices such as standard, clear labeling and locked storage for ingredients containing THC might decrease the risk for unintentional THC exposure at licensed food businesses,” the CDC concluded.
Other recent mix-ups
The Famous Yetis incident is among the latest examples of people potentially consuming intoxicating products sold as something else.
On July 29, the FDA announced a recall by the California-based High Noon seltzer company after it discovered workers had inadvertently packaged alcoholic seltzer in energy drink cans.
Last year, the parents of a two-year-old said workers at a Japanese restaurant accidentally served their toddler cooking wine mislabeled as apple juice.
Critics of legal marijuana have long argued that manufacturers deliberately blur the lines with pot-infused products resembling normal cookies or candies, and many states that have legalized marijuana have strict rules intended to prevent such mixups.
Emergency-room doctors have reported a significant increase in the number of patients they’ve treated as marijuana legalization has spread across the country, but acknowledge alcohol still drives far more emergency hospitalizations and injuries. The CDC says more than 2,100 Americans die annually from alcohol poisoning, and about 178,000 people nationally die as a result of excessive alcohol use.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pizza joint: Wisconsin restaurant accidentally served pot-laced food
