Marijuana for Seniors | Fifth Ave Green House

Seniors are the fastest growing demographic for marijuana

People like to complain that baby boomers never change, but at least when it comes to marijuana, older people are willing to indulge (and get high). According to a federal survey, the number of Americans over the age of 65 who use marijuana has nearly tripled in a decade—from 11 percent in 2009 to 32 percent in 2019. In addition, more than half of the 60- to 64-year-old population reported using cannabis.

While other generations love to hate the baby boomers for their regressive views, in their defense, many of them grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, an era of psychedelic music and free love. While it's easy for young people to think that this generation was OK with the absurd (and unscientific) era of the drug war under Reagan, our grandparents may have been more excited than expected about the recently begun legalization of marijuana. At least, that's what recent polling data suggests.

Despite being part of a culture that produced revolutionaries like Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley, who created some of the most extraordinary cannabis-inspired artwork of the century, there is another reason why older people turn to marijuana: they have health problems. Many people over 60 struggle with insomnia, pain, anxiety, arthritis, cancer, etc.

“Without marijuana, I wouldn't do a lot of things anymore,” Daniel, 61, who lives and works on a farm in Wisconsin, told The Hill. “I wouldn't do it because it hurts too much.”

Uthe said he smokes marijuana “for pleasure, maybe once a month, but much more often for pain relief.” As many marijuana users know, the line between medicinal and recreational use is thinner than often assumed. For example, if taking marijuana to treat an anxiety disorder also brings a good high, then that's OK, and if you're using marijuana to get a little high, then it's OK that it helps with your anxiety.

Despite being the fastest-growing demographic, baby boomers are still less likely to smoke cannabis regularly than other generations. According to 2021 statistics, about 5 percent of Americans over 54 and 10 percent of Americans in the 60–64 age group have used marijuana in the past month, compared to 24 percent of adults under 25. However, these statistics may not be entirely reliable. While it's important to remember that many older Americans aren't as backward as the baby boomer memes portray them to be, some may still cling to the “just say no” stigma imposed on them by Reagan-era policies. As a result, it's likely that more older adults are using marijuana but keeping quiet about it.

“Since 2009, we have seen a significant increase in cannabis use across all age groups and all demographics, with older adults also participating for the first time.” William Kerr, a senior scientist at the nonprofit Alcohol Research Group, said that some older adults “do not admit [to marijuana use] in surveys.”

A 2023 Gallup poll recently found that half of all Americans have tried marijuana. To put that in perspective, the same data collection found that 34 percent of adults had tried marijuana in 1999 and 4 percent in 1969. However, this data may again reflect the increasing legalization and social acceptance of marijuana. It is likely that people have been using more marijuana in recent years, but until recently did not feel comfortable admitting it to pollsters.

But fear not, young people reading this. You're still one step ahead. Federal data shows that more than two in five adults between the ages of 19 and 30 now use marijuana. Most of those people likely live in states where it's legal, suggesting that federal legalization could actually help eliminate marijuana stigma.

Even older people (around the same age as most of our presidential candidates) aren't exactly enthusiastic about legalizing marijuana, let alone actually using it. According to fall 2022 data from the Pew Research Center, only 30 percent of Americans over 75 support legalizing recreational marijuana. This reflects the views of a generation, the “silent generation,” born between 1928 and 1945, when recreational marijuana was not yet mainstream in society. “This is really the silent generation and every generation before it,” Kerr told The Hill. “They weren't exposed to it growing up and have had negative views about it for years.”

Compared to their predecessors, baby boomers are more relaxed and outgoing than we would think. The same Pew Research Center survey found that 53 percent of Americans in the 65-74 age group support marijuana use in adulthood, a figure that is in line with the national average.

While this data on open-minded, marijuana-smoking baby boomers is intriguing, it's important to remember that it's a result of social and legal changes. Just because Reagan-era adults were open-minded doesn't mean the war on drugs didn't have negative effects. Marijuana use declined sharply during the Reagan era in the 1980s, when most baby boomers shied away from using the herb because it was illegal, harder to obtain, and users faced more severe consequences if arrested than they do today. Sometimes it's important to look back to see how far we've come, even though legalization has many hurdles to overcome.