Exposure to natural substances with psychoactive effects -- including marijuana, kratom, magic mushrooms and nutmeg -- triggered more than 67,300 calls to U.S. Poison Control Centers over nearly two decades.
That's an average of 3,743 calls a year between January 2000 and December 2017, or about 10 calls a day, according to researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. About nine in 10 cases occurred at a home, 64 percent involved males, and most cases were in people older than 19 (41 percent), or aged 13 to 19 (35 percent).
The substances most often involved were marijuana (47 percent); anticholinergic plants such as jimson weed (21 percent); and hallucinogenic mushrooms (16 percent).
Rates of hospital admission and serious medical outcomes were most common in ...
