MARIJUANA, ONCE DIVISIVE, BRINGS SOME FAMILIES CLOSER

To the rites of middle-age passage, some families are adding another:
buying marijuana for aging parents.

Bryan, 46, a writer who lives in Illinois, began supplying his
parents about five years ago, after he told them about his own
marijuana use. When he was growing up, he said, his parents were very
strict about illegal drugs.

"We would have grounded him," said his mother, who is 72.

But with age and the growing acceptance of medical marijuana, his
parents were curious. His father had a heart ailment, his mother had
dizzy spells and nausea, and both were worried about Alzheimer's
disease and cancer. They looked at some research and decided
marijuana was worth a try.

Bryan, who like others interviewed for this article declined to use
his full name for legal reasons, began making them brownies and
ginger snaps laced with the drug. Illinois does not allow medical use
of marijuana, though 14 states and the District of Columbia do. At
their age, his mother said, they were not concerned about it leading
to harder drugs, which had been one of their worries with Bryan.

"We have concerns about the law, but I would not go back to not
taking the cookie and going through what I went through," she said,
adding that her dizzy spells and nausea had receded. "Of course, if
they catch me, I'll have to quit taking it."

This family's story is still a rare one. Less than 1 percent of
people 65 and over said they had smoked marijuana in the last year,
according to a 2009 survey by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration. But as the generation that embraced
marijuana as teenagers passes into middle age, doctors expect to see
more marijuana use by their elderly patients.

"I think use of medical marijuana in older people is going to be much
greater in the future," said Dan G. Blazer, a professor of geriatric
psychology at Duke University who has studied drug use and abuse
among older people.

The rate for people ages 50 to 65 who said they smoke marijuana was
nearly 4 percent - about six times as high as the 65-and-over crowd -
suggesting that they were more likely to continue whatever patterns
of drug use they had established in their younger years. In both age
groups, the rate of marijuana abuse was very low, about 1 in 800.

Cannabinoids, the active agents in marijuana, have shown promise as
pain relievers, especially for pain arising from nerve damage, said
Dr. Seddon R. Savage, a pain specialist and president of the American
Pain Society, a medical professionals' group.

Two cannabinoid prescription drugs are approved for use in this
country, but only to treat nausea or appetite loss. And while
preliminary research suggests that cannabinoids may help in fighting
cancer and reducing spasms in people with multiple sclerosis or
Parkinson's disease, the results have been mixed.

Dr. Savage said doctors should be concerned about older patients
using marijuana. "It's putting people at risk of falls, impaired
cognition, impaired memory, loss of motor control," she said. "Beside
the legal aspects, it's unsupervised use of a pretty potent drug.
Under almost all circumstances, there are alternatives that are just
as effective."

Dr. Savage added, however, that there was a considerable range of
opinions about marijuana use among pain specialists, and that many favored it.

Older people may face special risks with marijuana, in part because
of the secrecy that surrounds illegal drug use, said Dr. William
Dale, section chief of geriatrics and palliative medicine at the
University of Chicago Medical Center, who said he would not oppose a
law allowing medical marijuana use in Illinois.

The drug raises users' heart rates and lowers their blood pressure,
so doctors needed to weigh its effects beside those of other
medications that users might be taking, he said. But patients do not
always confide their illegal drug use, he said.

"It's a fine balance between being supportive of patients to gain
their trust and giving them your best recommendations," Dr. Dale
said. "I wasn't taught this in medical school."

For some families, marijuana, which was once the root of all their
battles, has brought them closer together. Instead of parental
warnings and punishment, there are questions about how to light a
water pipe; instead of the Grateful Dead, there are recipes for
low-sodium brownies.

But for parents, there is also the knowledge that they are putting
their children at risk of arrest.

"I was very uncomfortable getting my son involved," said the father
of Alex, 21. The father, who is 54, started using marijuana to
relieve his pain from degenerative disc disease. He soon discovered
that Alex, who lives in Minnesota a few miles away, had access to
better marijuana than he did.

Alex's father had smoked marijuana when he was younger; Alex, by
contrast, had been active in antidrug groups at his school and
church. In college, he started smoking infrequently and studying
marijuana's medicinal properties.

"When he told me he was using cannabis, I think he expected it to be
a bigger deal for me," Alex said. "But it opened my eyes to what he
was going through."

Before trying marijuana, Alex's father took OxyContin, a narcotic,
which he said made him "feel like a zombie." He also took
antidepressants to relieve the mood disorder he associated with the
OxyContin. Marijuana has helped him cut down on the painkillers, he said.

He and Alex have smoked together twice, but it is not a regular
practice, both said. Yet they say the drug has strengthened their relationship.

"We spend our bonding time making brownies," Alex said.

Florence, 89, an artist who lives in New York, smokes mainly for
relief from her spinal stenosis - usually one or two puffs before
going to sleep, she said. She buys her pipes through an online shop
and gets her marijuana from her daughter, Loren, who is 65.

"A person brings it to me," said Loren, who uses marijuana
recreationally. "I'm not out on a street corner." Florence said that
she had told all of her doctors that she was using marijuana, and
that none had ever discouraged her or warned of interactions with her
prescription drugs, including painkillers.

"I think I've influenced my own physician on the subject," she said.
"She came to me and asked me for some for another patient."