The surprising age group dabbling with marijuana at a higher rate than any other

Think marijuana is just for youngsters with man buns and Rasta-colored backpacks?

Think again.

It turns out that it’s the 65-and-older crowd that is experimenting with cannabis in greater numbers than any other age group.

New research from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) found that the number has “tripled since 2009, from 11% to 32% in 2019,” Fox News Digital reports, adding that the “numbers of older Americans trying pot increased further to 35% in 2021, the researchers noted, because the survey methodology changed during the pandemic.”

More than half of those surveyed in the 60-64 demographic reported that they use cannabis.

Dr. Elie G. Aoun, an addiction and forensic psychiatrist at New York’s Columbia University, told Fox News Digital that seniors “experimenting with marijuana for the first time is driven” by a number of factors, including “a combination of physical ailments, the increased cultural acceptance of marijuana and the marketing efforts aimed at promoting marijuana as a therapeutic agent.”

Aoun said the seniors are experimenting with weed “despite the lack of evidence to support its wide use.”

But according to Leafwell, a popular pro-cannabis website, marijuana offers seniors “many potential benefits,” not the least of which is pain management, free from the addictive and “zombified” effects of opiates.

“There are two good reasons for cannabis’s ability to treat pain. One is that phytocannabinoids help provide pain relief via the endocannabinoid system (ECS) rather than directly via the opioid receptors in the body, meaning the addiction potential is reduced significantly,” Leafwell states. “The other reason is that one of the leading causes of pain is psychological stress. Reduce the stress and you can reduce the pain, which is one of the reasons why doctors often prescribe antidepressants to manage pain. And cannabis’ ability to manage stress and anxiety is well documented.”

The number of people 65 and older who reported having used marijuana in the past year increased fivefold in 2021 over the 1% who admitted to using it a decade ago, Fox News Digital reports.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on its website that marijuana “is the most commonly used federally illegal drug in the United States, with an estimated 48.2 million people using it in 2019.”

However, with Minnesota’s legalization of the plant in June, 23 states have now allowed the use of marijuana.

The cannabis plant contains more than 100 compounds, Fox News Digital notes.

In addition to the psychoactive THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) there is cannabidiol, more commonly known as CBD, which provides pain relief without the “high.” Products containing CBD can be purchased over the counter in many drug stores and smoke shops across the nation.

William C. Kerr, scientific director of the nonprofit Alcohol Research Group at the Public Health Institute in Emeryville, Calif., points to the aging baby boomers for the increase in senior use.

“Cannabis use in the population over 65 was rare until recently, as baby boomers reached these ages,” Kerr said.

As Fox states, “Many Americans in the baby boom generation tried marijuana as they became young adults in the 1970s when drug experimentation was in vogue, with 36% of those 18-25 smoking marijuana in the past month in 1979, according to the report.”

These grandmas and grandpas, after all, came of age in the Hippy-haze of Vietnam and Free Love.

It was former President Ronald Reagan’s passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act in the 1980s — legislation that imposed stiffer penalties for drug possession — that put the kibosh on kush.

Today, though, the stigma has been largely lifted, and, according to Fox News Digital, “Some 5% of those over 65 and 10% of those ages 60-64 reported marijuana use in the past month in 2021, compared to 24% of young adults.”

Melissa Fine

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