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Marijuana use by seniors goes up as boomers age
hosted ^ | Feb 22 | MATT SEDENSKY

Posted on 02/22/2010 6:57:32 AM PST by JoeProBono

MIAMI - 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.....

(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Health/Medicine; History
KEYWORDS: boomers; jpb; marijuana; medicalmarijuana; seniors; wod
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To: CalvaryJohn

True; both impair judgment. One takes its toll on the liver, the other, lungs.


41 posted on 02/22/2010 8:25:14 AM PST by Mengerian
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To: autumnraine
WOW, he has others who would agree with him here! No, I don't blame pot totally. It is his life and he is the one that has chose to continue to smoke dope. As his mom, I have seen how it has changed him. He is not lazy at all, he is just the opposite. He works non stop, but now he is waiting tables 60 hours a week making min wage plus tips. He lost his job at a top restaurant company as a manager because he could not pass the drug test. Had nothing to do with his lack of ability or work attendance. I see the guys he continues to hang out with who are not married. He has a son who is 12 and caught him smoking pot. Now his son wants nothing to do with him because his dad lied 3 times saying he was finished with pot. My son, is the one who has told me pot has ruined his life. But still no excuse, he has the power to put it down but chooses not to and has given up his son because of his decession to smoke weed! Just saying it isn't as hip as people make it out to be.
42 posted on 02/22/2010 8:31:44 AM PST by JFC
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To: stuartcr

Not at all. More power to them!


43 posted on 02/22/2010 8:33:55 AM PST by Mengerian
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To: JFC

You know, a lot of adults with ADD turn to pot as a way of self medicating. To the person with ADD, pot does not make them “stoned” as just staring off into space but rather helps them to focus as they learn to adjust the amount smoked. Most people in this catagory are your all day tokers. They don’t get baked, just smoke enough to make their brain not so frazzled. LSD was developed for people with scizophrenia and people with Bi-Polar/Manic Depressive responded well with it. It effects their brain different than if you or I took it. Look up some information on people with this condition who are pot smokers. You would know if he exhibited ADD behavior as a child. Even if it wasn’t bad enough to warrant medication as a child.

Your son may feel that he can’t function without it and society is the one with the problem. My mom took anti-anxiety meds and one time looked at them and said “How do I judge people who use other things to do what someone gave me permission to use?”

Talk to your son about getting on some form of adult ADHD medication and see if that helps relieve him from his dependence on pot. It’s not that he CHOOSES pot over these other things like a better position at a job, but that he may feel that he cannot handle life without it and a half functioning (because of society laws, not his actions-in his way of thinking) is better than not at all or worse drugs that are out there.


44 posted on 02/22/2010 10:36:10 AM PST by autumnraine (You can't fix stupid, but you can vote it out!)
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To: PGR88

.
NYT and potheads.

Exactly.


45 posted on 02/22/2010 10:54:27 AM PST by Touch Not the Cat
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To: JFC
He knows he can’t pass a drug test at other jobs.

That's just another reason why we either need to get rid of drug testing in the workplace or making marijuana legal again.

46 posted on 02/22/2010 11:04:37 AM PST by ChrisInAR (You gotta let it out, Captain!)
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To: A CA Guy
You better get busy. The latest Rasmussen survey has the legalization measure ahead in CA. It also shows the lead increasing from four months earlier:

07-24-2009:

47% support
42% oppose
11% undecided

11-22-2009:

49% support
38% oppose
12% undecided

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_state_surveys/california/49_in_california_favor_legalizing_taxing_pot

47 posted on 02/22/2010 11:05:01 AM PST by Ken H (Debt free is the way to be)
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To: JoeProBono

So we’re shocked that the smelly twenty-something hippies are now smelly sixty something hippies?


48 posted on 02/22/2010 11:05:47 AM PST by Terabitten (Vets wrote a blank check, payable to the Constitution, for an amount up to and including their life.)
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To: wardaddy
...never thought I’d quit but life got in the way...

Me neither, and me too. It got less fun and I got too busy. Couldn't be less interested now.

Stan Owsley's still around. Big-time meat eater according to his Wiki article. That much acid cooks yer brain, IMHO.

49 posted on 02/22/2010 11:05:57 AM PST by Billthedrill
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To: Vision
It’s much worse than alcohol which is why it’s illegal.

I sure don't trust government that much just to accept what they say.

50 posted on 02/22/2010 11:06:17 AM PST by rhombus
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To: Terabitten

51 posted on 02/22/2010 11:08:40 AM PST by JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet)
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To: Hoosier-Daddy

“Just when your memory starts to slip, you jam on the accelerator...”

dang, that was funny !!!!!


52 posted on 02/22/2010 11:12:56 AM PST by Kimmers (Be the kind of person when your feet hit the floor each morning the devil says, Oh crap, she's awake)
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To: wardaddy

Yes, he lives in Australia or Oz...I forget which....

“We’ll go to Frisco, buy a wig and sleep on Owsley’s floor” F.Z.

“Just by chance, you crossed a diamond with a pearl”.


53 posted on 02/22/2010 11:21:06 AM PST by KeepUSfree (WOSD = fascism pure and simple.)
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To: Ken H; A CA Guy

That’s fantastic! Thanks for reporting the good news.


54 posted on 02/22/2010 11:25:27 AM PST by ChrisInAR (You gotta let it out, Captain!)
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To: CalvaryJohn

I think it is less dangerous than alcohol.


55 posted on 02/22/2010 11:29:23 AM PST by panthermom
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To: JoeProBono
An 88yo is NOT a baby boomer! The oldest baby boomers are 64 this year and the younger genration Jones(born after 1957) are 46 this year.
56 posted on 02/22/2010 11:53:27 AM PST by chris_bdba
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To: JoeProBono

I find it amusing and predictable, that this thread will have the usual sterotyping associated with the subject of marijuana and anyone who chooses to use it.

The majority of conservatives fall into the 50+ age group. Those in that age group were part of what was called the “hippie generation”, and are now what some like to negatively call the “old hippies”. Seems to me that those “old hippies”, who were most often quite liberal way back when, grew into incredibly productive and patriotic Americans.

If senior citizens choose to smoke marijuana, I couldn’t care less. Drinking adult beverages does not mean someone is a “drunk”. Smoking marijuana doesn’t mean someone is a “pot head”, a “loser”, nor a “stinky old hippy”.

And who invented that weed/medicinal herb anyhow? God.


57 posted on 02/22/2010 12:02:09 PM PST by CaribouCrossing
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To: chris_bdba

“An 88yo is NOT a baby boomer! The oldest baby boomers are 64 this year and the younger genration Jones(born after 1957) are 46 this year.”

Those born “after 1957” are now at least 52 years old.


58 posted on 02/22/2010 12:05:24 PM PST by CaribouCrossing
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To: CaribouCrossing

Yes I ended up deleteting part of that post*sorry about that*...it should read “and the younger generation Jones (born after 1957) of Boomers the youngest turn 46 this year.


59 posted on 02/22/2010 12:16:24 PM PST by chris_bdba
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To: chris_bdba

No need to apologize. I just happened to have a math moment. heh heh


60 posted on 02/22/2010 12:18:43 PM PST by CaribouCrossing
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