Pizza Shop Accidentally Gets 85 People High

A Wisconsin pizza joint accidentally served THC-laced food to dozens of customers, sending seven to the hospital and proving that marijuana mix-ups aren't just a stoner comedy plot.

Famous Yeti's Pizza in suburban Madison unknowingly dosed at least 85 people, including eight children, with pot-infused oil last October. Customers who just wanted dinner got way more than they bargained for—dizziness, anxiety, and an unexpected high.

How This Happened

The chaos started when cooks ran out of regular canola oil. Instead of making a grocery run like normal people, they grabbed cooking oil from a shared commissary area. The problem was that oil belonged to a company that makes marijuana edibles.

"The owner initially thought the oil was plain canola oil but later realized it might have been infused with THC," federal health officials concluded.

Investigators initially suspected carbon monoxide poisoning when reports of sick customers started rolling in. Instead, they got accidental drugging via pizza, sandwiches, and garlic bread.

The Legal Loophole

Here's where it gets weird. Marijuana is illegal in Wisconsin, but the edibles company was using hemp-derived delta-9 THC, which is technically legal. Hemp and marijuana come from the same cannabis plant, but hemp has lower THC levels—except when companies extract and concentrate it.

The CDC's takeaway? Maybe—just maybe—businesses should clearly label their THC-infused ingredients and lock them up. As if this is some sort of revolutionary thinking there.

Not the First Mix-Up

Famous Yeti's joins a growing list of businesses accidentally intoxicating customers:

• High Noon seltzer just recalled products after packaging alcoholic drinks in energy drink cans

• A Japanese restaurant served a toddler cooking wine labeled as apple juice last year

• Emergency rooms report increasing marijuana-related visits as legalization spreads

Critics of legal weed have been warning about this exact scenario. When pot cookies look like regular cookies and THC oil looks like cooking oil, mix-ups become inevitable.

The Bigger Picture

This incident highlights the messy reality of partial marijuana legalization. When some THC products are legal and others aren't, when hemp-derived compounds exist in legal gray areas, and when pot products share space with regular food items, someone's bound to get accidentally high.

The CDC notes that while marijuana mix-ups are increasing, alcohol still causes way more damage—killing 2,100 Americans annually from poisoning alone and contributing to 178,000 deaths from excessive use.

But that's cold comfort to parents whose kids got dosed with THC at a pizza shop.

What Now?

Famous Yeti's customers learned the hard way that "secret ingredient" isn't always a good thing. Seven people needed hospital treatment for what they thought was food poisoning but turned out to be accidental marijuana intoxication.

The incident raises serious questions about food safety in states with partial legalization. If businesses can't tell the difference between regular cooking oil and THC-infused oil, what else might slip through?

States that have fully legalized marijuana typically require strict labeling, locked storage, and separation from regular food products. Wisconsin's hemp loophole apparently doesn't have those safeguards.

The Lesson

For restaurants: Maybe check what oil you're grabbing before coating dozens of pizzas with it. Label your ingredients. Don't share storage with other companies if you can't tell the products apart.

For customers: If your pizza makes you feel funny, it might not be the cheese.

For regulators: When you create legal loopholes for hemp-derived THC, don't act surprised when someone accidentally gets an unknowing group of people high.

The Famous Yeti's incident wasn't malicious—just monumentally foolish. But it shows what happens when intoxicating products enter mainstream commerce without proper safeguards.

Those 85 customers, especially the eight kids, deserved better than surprise marijuana with their meal. They ordered pizza, not an unplanned trip to the emergency room.

Next time a restaurant runs out of cooking oil, maybe they should just close early.

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