How Seniors Joined the Cannabis Craze
I wish we all lived in states that allowed us to get rid of pains with cannabis. But we do not. Only a select few can enjoy its benefits. damn
How Seniors Joined the Cannabis Craze
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-seniors-joined-the-cannabis-craze
By Sara Davidson
April 20, 2018
On a sunny afternoon last August, a dozen women from Balfour Senior Living, in Louisville, Colorado, boarded a bus for a field trip to a marijuana dispensary. One used a walker, one was hooked up to an oxygen tank, and another wore a linen suit and jewelry. All were told to wear hats while walking from the bus to the dispensary door. “The sun is our enemy,” one said.
Joan Stammerjohn, who is eighty-four, said she’d joined the group because she’s had chronic pain in her legs, and has been on OxyContin for ten years. “I’d like to get off it,” she said. Others said they had ailments like arthritis or back pain, but didn’t want to disclose their names because they believe marijuana is still stigmatized. “We’re travelling incognito,” one said. “I’m excited. I came to open my mind—I want to know the latest things. I hope this won’t be in the paper, though. We’ll have a crowd coming to Balfour, thinking this is the coolest place.”
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Seniors are America’s fastest-growing population of new cannabis users. Ten thousand people turn sixty-five each day, according to the Pew Research Center, and more and more are trying the drug for their health and well-being. Even conservative politicians are warming to the idea. John Boehner, the sixty-eight-year-old former Speaker of the House, who in 2011 said he was “unalterably opposed” to the legalization of marijuana, recently made news by announcing that he was joining the board of Acreage Holdings, which distributes cannabis across eleven states. His “thinking on cannabis” had “evolved,” he tweeted.
In Louisville, the week before the field trip, there had been a lecture at Balfour by Joseph Cohen, D.O., the founder of Holos Health, which advises people on medical cannabis. The talk drew an overflow crowd of two hundred, with people standing against walls and spilling into the hallway. “The first thing older folks say when they enter our office is, ‘I don’t want to get high,’ ” Cohen said. He explained that there are two primary compounds in cannabis: THC, which is psychoactive, and CBD, which is not. “So CBD is a great solution for elders,” he said. “I took a little CBD before this talk, to make sure I stay calm.”
Cohen is seventy-one, with a long, gray ponytail and a beard. He recommends CBD for age-related diseases, such as Parkinson’s, dementia, osteoarthritis, and chronic inflammation. “CBD has twenty times the anti-inflammatory power of aspirin and two times the power of steroids,” he said. Since cannabis is federally illegal, none of his claims—or those made by any other clinician—can be supported by double-blind studies on humans, the gold standard in medical science. But in February a peer-reviewed study of almost three thousand patients in Israel, the first of its kind, showed that cannabis can be safe and effective for seniors, and lead to decreased use of pharmaceuticals, including opioids. In the study, published in the European Journal of Internal Medicine, almost ninety-four per cent of patients reported improvement in their condition, with their pain level reduced by half.
For Cohen, who practiced obstetrics and gynecology for thirty years, such results speak to the power of the endocannabinoid system, which regulates many body processes, such as nerve signalling, reproduction, and the immune system. “When I went to medical school, we didn’t know about the endocannabinoid system,” he said. “We knew about THC because we’d light up between classes.” The audience laughed. “We’re wired for this plant,” he continued. He explained that the body makes endocannabinoids—chemicals similar to THC and CBD—which lock onto receptors found throughout the body, especially in the brain. “Receptors are not found in the body because there is a plant out there that will trigger them,” Raphael Mechoulam, the Israeli biochemist who discovered THC, in 1964, said. “Receptors are present because the body makes compounds that activate them.”
Two major groups of seniors are turning to cannabis. The first, like the women on the field trip, have never tried marijuana and are drawn to its alleged health benefits. The second are boomers who “smoked dope” in the sixties and seventies, giving it up when they became focussed on careers or raising kids. An attorney I know in Los Angeles, who didn’t want his name disclosed, recently returned to the drug after developing acute pain in his joints. At seventy-one, he was diagnosed with polymyalgia rheumatica, an inflammatory autoimmune disease. His doctor put him on prednisone. This decreased the pain but had unpleasant side effects, including insomnia, and required him to give up his passion for fine wine............................
https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5ad77f12c5c6615f66c3c667/master/w_649,c_limit/Davidson-Seniors-Marijuana.jpg
A woman in Oakland, California, who uses medicinal marijuana to treat lupus. Older Americans are the country’s fastest-growing population of new cannabis users.
Photograph by Robyn Twomey
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