With cannabis legalization, it’s not the teens we have to worry about. It’s seniors

Canada watch out for stoned seniors!


https://www.thestar.com/news/cannabis/opinion/2018/08/29/with-cannabis-legalization-its-not-the-teens-we-have-to-worry-about-its-seniors.html

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By EMMA TEITELNational Columnist
Wed., Aug. 29, 2018
Legal cannabis is upon us and the nation’s parents are paranoid.

More accurately, they are concerned, according to a survey commissioned by OrganiGram Inc., a Canadian medical marijuana producer, that they lack the resources necessary to educate their kids about the risks involved in lighting up, getting high, or as we said in my day, “blazing.”

Three out of five parents surveyed by OrganiGram are “concerned about legalization,” and 54 per cent “say there is not enough information available about risks.”

Risks involved in cannabis consumption include but are not limited to mood changes, impaired memory, impaired driving, delusions, eating everything in the fridge (expiration dates be damned) and, if you’re a teen who lives in the suburbs, spending way too much time hanging out in Tim Hortons parking lots — take it from someone who spent the greater part of her adolescence in one, these fears are understandable. But they may also be misplaced.

They may be misplaced because it’s hard to believe that teens (many of whom have been smoking pot illegally for years) will be in significant danger come legalization day in October — or that they will be significantly more stoned.

In fact, the opposite may be true. According to federal government research in the U.S., regular marijuana use among teens in Colorado actually declined after the state legalized cannabis sales.

Canadian parents then may want to shift some of their concern away from their adolescent progeny and lay it on a different set of family members: their aging parents.

According to another study, this one published in 2016 by the Society for the Study of Addiction, “the prevalence of cannabis use has increased significantly in recent years” among, guess who, U.S. adults 50 years and older. And according to the Canadian Science Policy Centre, “the percentage of Ontarians over 50 who used cannabis in the past year nearly tripled over the last 10 years, and rose fivefold since 1977.”

When you think about it, this makes perfect sense.

Teens don’t care and never did care that smoking weed is socially acceptable. The prospect of legalization isn’t likely a huge incentive for adolescents who are attracted to drug use in part because it’s frowned upon.

But respectability is a major incentive for older people who want to use cannabis but who aren’t rule-breaking types.

It may follow that unlike teenagers who already use cannabis frequently, older people who haven’t used it in decades but who want to smoke up in their golden years are potentially at a higher risk of abusing the substance. (It’s also worth noting that baby boomers are used to the less potent pot of their youth, and have been known to exclaim upon inhaling modern day marijuana “geez, that’s strong!”)

However, this problem doesn’t just occur around smoking strong weed, but eating it too.

According to the CBC, which published an investigation on cannabis overdose this month, a man in his late 50s recently collapsed at a Toronto jazz bar after ingesting a cannabis edible. In the words of the bar supervisor who witnessed the incident (which he originally assumed was the result of a heart attack or stroke), the collapsed bar patron “had eaten a (cannabis) edible and just couldn’t handle it.”

At the risk of being labelled ageist, I predict that if legalization harms any one demographic it won’t be rebellious teens, but older Canadians who buy their first gram in 35 years and discover the stuff packs a punch stronger than they had anticipated and heavier than they can handle.

Perhaps a series of government PSAs is in order that specifically target seniors who want to get stoned, but who fancy themselves too experienced to abuse marijuana. Be advised: you’re never too old to have a bad trip.

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Wow cannabis use has tripled in use in the last ten years and a five fold increase over the last 40! No doubt the Narcs will claim that dementia and all the other health issues seniors have is now caused by cannabis.