OLDER ADULTS' POT USE UP

Advocates Hope to Get Boost From Boomers in Legalization Effort

In her 88 years, Florence Siegel has learned how to relax: A glass of
red wine. A crisp copy of The New York Times, if she can wrest it
from her husband. Some classical music, preferably Bach. And every
night like clockwork, she lifts a pipe to her lips and smokes marijuana.

Long a fixture among young people, use of the country's most popular
illicit drug is now growing among the AARP set, as the massive
generation of baby boomers who came of age in the 1960s and '70s grows older.

The number of people aged 50 and older reporting marijuana use in the
prior year went up from 1.9 percent to 2.9 percent from 2002 to 2008,
according to surveys from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration.

Observers expect further increases as 78 million boomers born between
1945 and 1964 age. For many boomers, the drug never held the stigma
it did for previous generations, and they tried it decades ago.

Politically, advocates for legalizing marijuana say the number of
older users could represent an important shift in their decades-long
push to change the laws.

"For the longest time, our political opponents were older Americans
who were not familiar with marijuana and had lived through the
'Reefer Madness' mentality and they considered marijuana a very
dangerous drug," said Keith Stroup, the founder and lawyer of NORML,
a marijuana advocacy group. "Now whether they resume the habit of
smoking or whether they simply understand that it's no big deal and
it shouldn't be a crime, in large numbers they're on our side of the issue."

The drug is credited with relieving many problems of aging: aches and
pains, glaucoma, macular degeneration, and so on. Patients in 14
states enjoy medical marijuana laws, but those elsewhere buy or grow
the drug illegally to ease their conditions.

But there's also the risk that health problems already faced by older
people can be exacerbated by regular marijuana use.

Older users could be at risk for falls if they become dizzy, smoking
it increases the risk of heart disease and it can cause cognitive
impairment, said Dr. William Dale, chief of geriatrics and palliative
medicine at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

"There are other better ways to achieve the same effects," he said.