by Bill Alpert

“An increasing number of states have licensed cannabis sales, so a couple of geriatrics researchers wondered how many of the new users are elderly. Plenty, it turns out, according to a study published Monday in the Internal Medicine imprint of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“In the four years ended 2018, the share of seniors who acknowledged cannabis use soared 75%, report Benjamin Han and Joseph Palamar from New York University. This rising usage should spur clinical research on older consumers, they say, because ‘older adults are especially vulnerable to potential adverse effects from cannabis.’

“Survey data collected by the federal government showed that the proportion of seniors reporting pot use rose from 0.4% before 2007, to nearly 3% by 2016. As legalization has spread to new states, Han and Palamar found, the share of people 65 or older using cannabis increased from 2.4% in 2015 to 4.2% in 2018.”

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