Your parents and grandparents are having a change of heart when it come to cannanbis use. The same people who would routinely remind you that weed smoke is a gateway to hell, have taken a detour.
Per Sun Times:
Recreational marijuana use is sharply rising among the 50-and-older crowd in the United States, according to a recent study published by New York University researchers.
“Given the unprecedented aging of the U.S. population, we are facing a never before seen cohort of older adults who use recreational drugs,” said Benjamin Han, a geriatrician and health services researcher at the Center for Drug Use and HIV Research (CDUHR) and in the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Palliative Care at NYU Langone Medical Center (NYULMC).
“With the increased availability of legalized marijuana, there is an urgent need to understand the prevalence of its use and also its effects among older generations,” Han said in a release.
To better understand the prevalence of cannabis use among older Americans and attitudes toward the drug among the same group, Han and his team evaluated 47,140 responses to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health from adults aged 50 and older in the U.S.
Findings show a 71 percent increase in self-reported marijuana use among adults ages 50 and older between 2006 and 2013. Of this group, men used more cannabis than women, and prevalence was highest among adults ages 50 to 64. Adults 65 and older reported considerably lower rates of cannabis use than those in the 50-to-64 range.
The large majority of self-reported pot users indicated they started consuming the drug before the age of 18, which suggests many baby boomers have either been using marijuana for a long time, or recently started using the drug again.
Researchers also found that baby boomers don’t view marijuana as a particularly dangerous substance. Only 5 percent of respondents said they believed that using marijuana one or two times per week posed significant risks to their health.
So next time you’re at your grandparents house and you see a pipe, don’t jump to conclusions. They could just be smoking weed.