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More Older Americans Are Using Cannabis Than Ever Before!
A new study of people aged 50 to 80 has found that more older Americans are using cannabis now than before the pandemic. 12% said they’ve consumed a THC-containing substance in the past year and 4% say they do so multiple times a week. Those who drink alcohol at risky levels have a much higher rate of cannabis use.
The new findings, published in the journal Cannabis and Cannabinoids Research by a team from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, suggest a need for more education and screening of older adults for cannabis-related risks.
Lead researcher and addiction psychologist Anne Fernandez, Ph.D. said, “As the stress of the pandemic and the increased legalization of cannabis by states converged, our findings suggest cannabis use increased among older adults nationally. Older adults represent a vulnerable age group for cannabis use due to interactions with medications, risky driving, cannabis-related mental health impacts and increased possibility of falls and memory issues.”
The data in the study come from the National Poll on Healthy Aging, and the 2,023 older adults surveyed were taken in January 2021, nine months into the official pandemic declaration and just as the first COVID-19 vaccines were being made available to the groups at the highest risk.
Compared to previous studies, the overall past-year use of cannabis seen in the new study is notably higher. The NPHA in 2017 found that 6% of older adults had used cannabis for medical purposes.
In the new study, 9% participants said they use cannabis once a month or less. The poll question asked about use of any product containing THC, the main psychoactive component of cannabis—including edibles—and used common names for cannabis. It did not differentiate between medical and recreational use of cannabis.
Older adults who said they were unemployed, those who said they were unmarried and had no partner, and those who said they drank alcohol were more likely to say they used cannabis.
Fernandez notes an especially concerning finding: those whose alcohol use was high enough to cause physical and psychological harms were nearly eight times as likely to say they had used cannabis in the past year. But even those with low-risk alcohol drinking patterns were more than twice as likely to say they had used cannabis in the past year.
This group of dual-substance users is one that doctors and public health officials should pay special attention to,