As the legal marijuana market continues to expand, our four-legged companions have unwittingly gotten caught up in the cannabis craze. While there are plenty of CBD products for dogs and cats on the market, an unintended and negative consequence of the expanding business has been animal ingestion of psychoactive THC products.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (known for its Sarah McLachlan-assisted ugly-cry commercial) reports that its 24-hour Animal Poison Control Hotline saw a 765 percent increase in marijuana-related calls between 2008 and 2018. THC products are usually dosed for much larger humans; when they re accidentally ingested by pets, they can cause problems, sometimes major ones. A study of 125 cannabis-related veterinary hospital admissions in Colorado found that two small dogs died after getting into medical-grade THC edibles.