The parents giving their children unregulated US drugs to make them sleep ...Middle East

“It’s 1mg. I can’t imagine it lasts more than a couple of hours.” So, reasons Kim Daniels*, explaining why she gives melatonin gummies to her six-year-old. The synthetic form of the sleep hormone melatonin is popular among adults to aid insomnia or jet lag. But increasingly, despite being prescription-only in the UK, parents are purchasing the sweeties to give to their children, to ease restless nights, get through long plane journeys – and to prevent impromptu wakes when the grown-ups are having a dinner party.

Daniels, who lives in London, is from the US, where melatonin is available over the counter at pharmacies for all ages. Considered a dietary supplement rather than medicine – and often marketed towards children with cartoon characters on the packaging, and gummies shaped like teddy bears – it is consumed by one in five Americans under 14. (Child doses can be the same as those for adults.) So she was more comfortable about giving it to her children than her British friends – but now, she says, many are doing the same and ask her to buy it for them.

Daniels, who lives in London, is from the US, where melatonin is available over the counter at pharmacies for all ages. Considered a dietary supplement rather than medicine – and often marketed towards children with cartoon characters on the packaging, and gummies shaped like teddy bears – it is consumed by one in five Americans under 14. (Child doses can be the same as those for adults.) So she was more comfortable about giving it to her children than her British friends – but now, she says, many are doing the same and ask her to buy it for them.

She sees it as a vital jet-lag salve, easing the transition between time zones when they return to America a couple of times a year. Giving her daughter a 1mg gummy for a few nights, either side of their trips, “helps her to get to sleep. And then once she is asleep, she stays asleep, which is a great thing.” (Daniels uses the gummies herself on these trips, too.)

She admits that there are a few other occasions throughout the year when, if her daughter is struggling to nod off, she’ll cave and give her what she knows as her “night-time vitamin”.

It has worked so well for Daniels’s daughter that friends want in. “I’m not a drug mule,” she says – but trips to the States often involve her procuring a larger stash to share out among parents on her return. “It’s a tool, and sometimes it’s a really, really useful one.”

Melatonin is a naturally produced hormone that regulates our circadian rhythm, with levels rising in the evening in order to send us off to sleep. In the UK, it can only be obtained on prescription, typically as a short-term fix for problems like insomnia. But among children, it is most commonly given to those with ADHD or autism, over 80 per cent of whom struggle with sleep. This can be to remedy naturally lower levels of melatonin, or to override the delays to sleep caused by their natural levels kicking in later at night. In the UK, analysis of NHS data shows melatonin prescribing among children has risen by 245 per cent since 2015.

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Still, research into synthetic melatonin’s safety among children is severely limited, says Dr Neil Stanley, sleep consultant and former director of sleep research at the University of Surrey. Where there is regulation, there is much left to be desired. A 2024 US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) study of 110 melatonin supplements marketed for children found that in some, doses were up to 667 per cent higher than described on the label.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, melatonin is the most commonly overdosed substance among infants and young children seen at US emergency departments, with a 420 per cent rise in visits between 2009 and 2020. Since 2015, seven infant melatonin-related deaths – including that of a two-month-old baby – have been investigated.

This growing prevalence comes from melatonin supplements being seen “as an easy way out rather than having to deal with the actual issue” of whatever’s hampering sleep in the first place, Stanley says. “Give the child a gummy and hope that the situation resolves itself.” There is no long-term data published on the effects in children, “but we do know that there are side effects,” which can include headaches and dizziness, nausea and night sweats. A 2023 review published in The Lancet surmised that “this major gap of knowledge on safety calls for caution against complacent use of melatonin in children and adolescents”.

Stanley adds that “there is a perception that melatonin is safe and the data just isn’t there.” Given that most parents in the UK procure theirs either overseas (where the FDA study crystallised that even legal products can be wildly misleading) or online, where safeguards are somewhere between slack and nonexistent, this is all the more pronounced.

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“If you are going to give melatonin to children, you certainly won’t be giving them a product that you could trust,” according to Stanley. “I would suggest that for most children, unless they are autistic, there would not really be a need for melatonin… the positive effects haven’t been proven but the side effects are known.”

Most parents using melatonin gummies for their children feel that its prescription-only status here is more a case of Britain behind the curve than because it presents an actual danger. “We’re very strict on it in the UK, but they’re more lenient in other countries. So in my reasoning, I think: it can’t be that awful,” says Becca Emery*, who has been giving her seven-year-old son melatonin gummies since he was four on their visits to family in the US. “I’m pretty sure my stepfather takes a tablet every single night.”

Stanley warns against this kind of thinking. “Saying you can go to America and you can buy melatonin over the counter, so it must be safe” is meaningless, as “you can go to America and buy handguns over the counter. It doesn’t mean that handguns are inherently safe; it means the law is different.” (In the UK, it is illegal to sell or distribute melatonin; one mother who spoke publicly about using gummies for her children was subject to a six-month police investigation.)

Given the accidental overdose rates in the US, are UK parents worried that their children might come across these ‘sleep sweeties’ and consume more than they should? “Kids are kids: if they see something that looks like a sweetie, they’re going to eat it. And I think that is a real risk, but our daughter knows that it would make her sick if you had more than one of these”, says Daniels.

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These “candid conversations”, along with childproof packaging and storing the gummies in a cabinet higher than her daughter can reach, give her confidence that there is no such overdose risk at their home. Both mothers say that keeping melatonin gummies in the bathroom is like having Calpol or Piriton; Emery adds that friends of hers use Calpol – a drug which contains paracetamol – as a sleep aid, yet no one bats an eyelid.

She has found the gummies to be “a real game-changer” for her son (though she admits she is concerned that overuse could lead to him being unable to produce melatonin naturally) – though not everyone has the same response. A friend of hers tried the gummies on her son, who was going through a particularly trying period of 4am wakes, but “she said it gave her little one nightmares, so she immediately stopped.” Having experienced plenty of gummy-induced restful nights, they have no plans to stop using it, risks or otherwise. “For the relief it gives us, it’s worth it.”

*Names and details have been changed

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