Marijuana use is rising sharply among seniors over 65, study says, and there are serious risks
according to this CNN Study Report
The numbers of American seniors over age 65 who now smoke marijuana or use edibles increased two-fold between 2015 and 2018, according to research published Monday in JAMA.
“I am an absolute chronic insomniac. I have been ever since I was a little tiny child — it just drives me crazy,” Collin said. “I take this little cube and it just makes me drowsy so I can sleep and doesn’t leave me groggy in the morning.”For pain relief, Collin uses a topical cream that contains both THC — the compound in the marijuana plant that makes you high — and CBD, the the compound in the plant used in medicinal marijuana. “I’m doing this to sleep and provide pain relief and I find it works”, she said. “I wouldn’t have done it if it was illegal.”
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“I was curious to see if it was people who are more sick, with say, multiple chronic conditions, trying cannabis, or is it the healthier people, perhaps with only one health condition,” Han said. “And it appears it’s the healthier older people who are trying cannabis more.”
Worrisome findings
“As a geriatrician, I worry about any kind of prescribed medicine or substance use — anything that has any kind of psychoactive effects,” Han said. “I worry about things like dizziness, falls. I worry how it may interact with certain medical conditions.”
However, 74-year-old Carol Collin disagreed. “Eating or smoking too much pot isn’t a worry. Even when we were doing this years and years and years ago, I wasn’t much into eating brownies or the smoking kind of stuff ’cause I didn’t like losing my control of my life,” she said.