Are Senior Citizens Smoking Marijuana?

One of the great things about medical marijuana programs throughout the United States is that they offer a little something for everyone. Unless, of course, you find yourself living in a dumb state like Texas where medical marijuana is only allowed for patients with severe, life-ending conditions that leave them unable to function. Otherwise, might as well continue to use opioids as far as Texas lawmakers are concerned. Anyways, most other states that are more compassionate about helping residents use marijuana safely to treat their conditions offer multiple products and strains that give everybody something to work with. People in America that are older than 65 or 70 can probably think back to a time not too long ago where marijuana was completely illegal throughout the entire nation. Of course, that didn’t really stop people from using it at all, it just meant that getting your hands on cannabis was a bit harder. Nowadays, however, marijuana is more accessible in legal ways than ever before. But do senior citizens really want to or need to use marijuana? 

After all, I can imagine that many older people are used to the stigma surrounding marijuana usage - it makes you lazy, it makes you poor, and it’s a gateway to using harder and more dangerous drugs. This is the reality that many people grew up in during the 50s, 60s, and 70s. However, with the introduction of more medical marijuana programs throughout the United States, there is a huge increase in the amount of older patients that are using it. Even more surprising, they are actually smoking weed! Today I wanted to shed some light on this subject and give our older folks a bit more love in the medical marijuana industry.

So are senior citizens really starting to use marijuana more often? Yes! Reports show that, over the last 5 years, the number of adults in the United States over the age of 65 that use marijuana has greatly increased. Sure, it has been a slow climb from back in 2018, but we are still getting there. In my opinion, the older generation houses the type of people that would most benefit from medical marijuana. After all, older people generally deal with more chronic illness, pain, and diseases that can prevent them from happily living out the rest of their retirement days. And many of those exact conditions are conditions that can be treated with medical marijuana. Now I know what you are thinking - my grandma would never smoke weed! Well, you may be surprised to find out that more and more older patients prefer various methods of cannabis inhalation over edibles, tinctures, or topicals. This all depends on the type of conditions being treated and the products that are available to them in their state, so keep that in mind. 

Anyways, I think that it is important for older people to have alternative options to using opioids and other harmful prescriptions since marijuana can be used to treat many of the same conditions. Senior citizens shouldn’t have to take upwards of 12 different medications each day - that can get super expensive and dangerous. Using cannabis just makes a lot of sense for when you are older. It lowers inflammation, fights pain, helps to boost mood and metabolism, and ultimately leads to more happiness and fulfillment. Anyways, that is all I really had to say in this post. Having access to various marijuana strains and products is super important for our society, especially since we come to better understand mental and physical health care. I hope that you learned something and that you can smoke a joint later tonight!