Why Growing Numbers of Baby Boomers and the Elderly Are Smoking Pot
More and more of the nation’s 78 million Boomers are discovering they’d rather smoke marijuana than reach for a pharmaceutical

Conventional wisdom dictates that as younger generations slowly replace the old, conservative social traditions are jettisoned. This may be true for issues such as gay marriage, where there are clear divisions among younger and older voters, but when it comes to marijuana reform, the evidence indicates that simplistic divisions of opinion along age lines don’t apply for pot.

Earlier this week, an AP wire article picked up a lot of buzz in the news-cycle, with a title and premise meant to shock the mainstream: “Marijuana Use by Seniors Goes up as Boomers Age.”

The AP article was pegged to a December report released by the Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). It revealed that the number of Americans over 50 who had reported consuming cannabis in the year prior to the study had gone up from 1.9 percent to 2.9 percent in the period from 2002 to 2008.

This is supported by earlier polling results. In February 2009, a Zogby poll found that voters aged 50 to 64 were almost equally divided in their support for marijuana legalization at 48 percent. In that same poll, young voters aged 18 to 29 were the cohort who most enthusiastically supported legalization, at 55 percent. But overall support among all ages came in at 44 percent.

So who brought the average down? Don’t lay the blame on the elderly. In fact, as early as 2004, an AARP poll found that 72 percent of its members (all 50-plus, with the lion’s share over 65) supported marijuana for medical purposes, indicating their understanding of the benefits of legal cannabis availability.

Some expert observers in the marijuana reform movement believe that the bulk of marijuana detractors are made up of 30- and 40-somethings — adults of parenting age. And as more of the 65-and-over crowd is populated by Baby Boomers, it appears that in the not-too-distant future every age demographic including the elderly will approve of marijuana reform more than Americans in their 30s and 40s.

Read the rest of the story online here.

50% increase in marijuana treatment admissions in one decade

In 1997, about 200,000 people checked into treatment for marijuana. By 2005, that number has risen to over 300,000 people, though it has tapered off a bit these last couple of years. By any account, this is a huge rise in the number of people seeking rehab for marijuana in just a decade. It would seem like the powerful new “Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed” has given rise to a 50% increase in reefer addicts!

Only 15% of marijuana "addicts" admit themselves to treatment

However, when you look behind the numbers, you find that this increase has more to do with the rapid increase of drug courts in the late ’90s, early ’00s. By far, most of the people who are in treatment for marijuana are forced there! 57% are forced into treatment by the criminal justice system, while only 15% admitted themselves to treatment. For comparison’s sake, over all drugs combined, 1/3rd of all admissions are self-admissions, marijuana is the drug with the lowest self-admission rates (lower than meth) and highest criminal justice-admission rates (higher than meth), and for alcohol, self-admission is around 29% and criminal justice (including DUI) admissions are only 42.5%.

37% of all people admitted for marijuana rehab didn't even use marijuana in the past month.

Even more interesting is a look at the actual substance use of the people admitted to treatment. Almost 4 out of ten marijuana smokers who are in treatment haven’t even used marijuana in thirty days! Again, for comparison, only 1 out of 4 alcohol admissions didn’t drink in the past month, and the number is only 1 in 6 for heroin.

Another interesting figure: almost 58% of marijuana admissions are first-time admissions to drug treatment, a number that seems suspisciously close to the 56.9% of admissions from criminal justice. That’s the highest first-time figure of all the common drugs (marijuana, alcohol, heroin, cocaine, and meth). Of those drugs, marijuana and alcohol are the only ones where the majority of drug treatment admissions are not returns to treatment. Also, 31% of marijuana users in treatment are employed, a number twice that of heroin or cocaine admissions, but lower than the 42.5% of employed alcohol users in treatment.

Marijuana rehab is almost exclusively aimed at people under 25

Finally, 3/4ths of marijuana rehabbers are male, half are white, 2/3rds are under age 25. Marijuana has the lowest average age of admittance (24 years old), with all other drugs but inhalants and hallucinogens having average ages in the 30’s. The average alcohol or crack cocaine rehabber is 39 years old.

While we certainly prefer any marijuana smoker caught by law enforcement to be sent to rehab rather than jail, the sentencing of people to rehab who don’t really need it means we are wasting resources that could be better directed to the unfulfilled needs of hard drugs addicts. If alcohol and crack’s average rehab age was closer to 20 than to 40, how much time, money, and misery would we save in this country?

Instead we arrest mostly young people for their marijuana use, then sentence them to rehab, then cite the increasing numbers of young people in rehab for marijuana as proof of the increasing danger of marijuana, which is then used to justify arresting more mostly young people for their marijuana use.

Leave it to the ever exploitive folks at CASA (The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University) to jump on the phony “It’s not your father’s pot” bandwagon. Their bogus claim — which CNN embarrassingly bought hook, line, and sinker — is that today’s allegedly stronger pot is responsible for the spike in the number of Americans enrolled in ‘drug treatment’ for cannabis.

Via Marketwire.com

From 1992 — 2006:

– There was a 175 percent jump in the potency of marijuana (3.2 to 8.8 percent THC concentration in seized samples).

– There was a 492 percent increase in the proportion of teen treatment admissions with a medical diagnosis for marijuana abuse or dependence, compared with a 54 percent decline for all other substances of abuse.

– There was a 188 percent increase in the proportion of teen treatment admissions for marijuana as the primary drug of abuse, compared with a 54 percent decline for all other substances of abuse.  

Notwithstanding that the potency figures cited by U-Miss are by the government’s own admission utter bullcrap, let me try to once again set the record straight in as few words as possible.

The recent spike in so-called marijuana ‘treatment’ admissions has nothing to do with marijuana; rather, it has everything to do with the public policies that criminalize its possession and use.

Noticeably absent from CASA’s press release (and CNN’s hatchet job) is the fact that marijuana arrests skyrocketed during this same period — from a modern low of 288,000 in 1991 to a record 830,000 in 2006.

Predictably, as record numbers of minor marijuana offenders have been arrested, a record number of judges and drug courts have been ordering defendants to attend ‘drug treatment’ in lieu of jail or as a requirement of their probation.

Nationally, according to data compiled by the US Substance Abuse and Mental Services Administration and published here, nearly 60 percent of all adolescents admitted to drug treatment for cannabis were ordered there by the criminal justice system. This percentage is almost a 50 percent increase since 1992. During this same time frame, “The proportion of admissions from [all] other referral sources declined.”

In other words, if Drug Czar John Walters and his ilk hadn’t been on a pot-arresting rampage over the past decade and a half — a rampage largely fueled by lies perpetuated by the likes of CASA and regurgitated by the talking heads at CNN — there would likely be fewer Americans in drug treatment for pot now than there were 16 years ago!

On a final note, I want to thank NORML podcaster extraordinaire Russ Belville for so diligently assisting me these past few days in debunking these ‘potent pot’ myths. If you have not heard his articulate call in to The Dr. Drew radio show yesterday — a call that left the good doctor tongue-tied — I suggest you immediately download an archive of the show (of which Drug Czar John Walters and I were both guests) here. Russ also has a comprehensive transcript of and rebuttal to the Drug Czar’s ridiculous on-air statements here.