Why Elders Kept California From Going to Pot
News Analysis
(Nov. 7) -- Every few months, my wife and I visit certain friends for dinner. As coffee is served, our elderly host reaches into a nearby drawer, pulls out his stash, and rolls a joint. Given the chance, he would not have voted the way most retirees did on Nov. 2 when California's Proposition 19 to legalize marijuana was defeated.
Fifty-three percent of the electorate voted against the measure, but among those 65 and over, 66 percent opposed it. The media made much of those big numbers – "Pot legalization defeated thanks to the elderly," Salon reported. But what intrigued me was the fact that a third of us elders actually approved the idea.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, just 0.9 percent of people 65 and over used any illicit drug in the past month. Apparently, a lot of elderly Californians who don't do marijuana voted to make pot-smoking legal.
Of course, California is way ahead of the marijuana curve, having voted to allow the sale of the drug for medical purposes more than a dozen years ago. Many elders, in and out of that state, legally and illegally, have been trying marijuana as science has discovered more and more ways it can meet their health needs.
They use it to relieve the pain of arthritis and other ailments and to cope with recurrent nausea and anorexia from cancer treatments. Recent studies indicate it may also protect against osteoporosis in the elderly and postpone the onset of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
On the other hand, there are plenty of reasons for elders to avoid pot. It can increase their risk of heart disease. Marijuana-induced dizziness can make them more likely to fall, a major medical hazard for the elderly. And, perhaps most important for members of the greatest generation, pot-smoking has been and generally remains to this day against the law.
My first direct encounter with the weed was on a long-ago Christmas when my then-wife and I received a present from our son in college. It was wrapped in what we used to call tin foil within a gift-wrapped tie box. Inside were a half-dozen joints.
We were shocked, and the present was instantly, well, stashed in a drawer and left to molder. Pot was illegal, and in those days we mistakenly believed it was an automatic stepping-stone to heroin.
A decade later, newly divorced, I shared a summer vacation house with a handful of much younger friends. After dinner one night, I also shared a joint with them. My pot debut turned me into the life of the party, and I treated everyone to a discourse and demonstration on how to eat cherries – "You stuff your mouth full..." – while the juice ran down my face.
Another marijuana-less decade passed, and I was still so naïve that I failed to recognize that the big, lovely plant flourishing under a grow light in my own apartment was in fact cannabis. When a friend blew the whistle, you know I banished the plant.
At any age, regular pot-smoking can be unhealthy – for the smoker and, potentially, for others as well. No one wants to be on the road with people high on pot, or working next to them on an assembly line for that matter. I suspect many of the California elders who voted against Proposition 19 had those things in mind, along with the feeling that keeping marijuana on the wrong side of the law might limit such problems.
When the current crop of elders gives way to the baby boomers, though, pot is likely to come into its own. Government surveys found that between 2002 and 2008, the number of people 55 to 59 years of age who said they had used marijuana in the past year soared from 1.6 percent to 5.1 percent.
Even now, surveys show that 70 percent or more of Americans approve of the use of marijuana for medical purposes. And a 2009 Zogby poll found that half of voters 50 to 64 years old favored legalization.
My own uptightness over marijuana has also eased. When we go over to our friends' place for dinner these days, and our host rolls a joint and passes it around the table, I will sometimes take a puff. Can't say it does much for me, though.
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