Photo: AFP
We’re all familiar with the image of the stoner; saying the word conjures images of a college-age slacker or a thirty-something professional who needs a hit to cope with the daily grind. However, a new survey estimates that 7% of all senior citizens thru 2023 were using pot- and that number was a 46% increase in the number of buzzed seniors from just two years earlier. Why are more seniors turning to marijuana, and do the risks outweigh the rewards at that age? Dr. Arthur Caplan is a professor of bioethics at NYU Langone Medical Center; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to offer some reasons why the elderly may want to lay off the marijuana as part of their medicinal regimen.
“The marijuana of today is not the marijuana of my youth,” Dr. Caplan told host Larry Mendte. “It is about ten times stronger. It’s bred or grown to be more potent, it has more THC, the business end of marijuana that gets people high… If it’s very, very strong and you take other drugs, as the elderly do, you can get interactions that could be dangerous for you. I think one of the big risks also for the elderly (is) they’re often suffering a little bit from hearing loss, there may be some physical impairment, let’s say vision loss and so on, and marijuana can complicate that.”
Dr. Caplan then offered one danger that the elderly already have to worry about as the leading reason why the buzz may not be worth it: “You know what the biggest danger is for an older person? Falls- falling down, breaking a hip. If we see that- I hate to say it, but a fall is often the road to the end, because you don’t get better quickly, you get bed-bound… anyway, you’ve got to be very careful.”
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