Marijuana use is on the rise in older adults

Marijuana use is on the rise among baby boomers in the United States, especially men, according to a study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The findings appear to reflect changing attitudes toward cannabis across the country, study co-author Bill Jesdale, an assistant professor of population and quantitative health science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worchester, suggested.

Use of the drug increased in older adults in both the states where marijuana has been legalized for recreational use and in the states where it has not, he said. “It seems that something has happened to the country as a whole.”

The study looked at of three years of survey data, collected from 2016 to 2018, on cannabis use in 171,507 adults ages 55 and up from 19 states and two territories.

Men ages 60 to 64 reported the highest rates of marijuana use, with 12.6 percent of those surveyed saying they used the drug in the past 30 days in 2018, up from 8.9 percent in 2016. Over the same time period, use also nearly doubled among men ages 65 to 69 (rising from 4.3 percent in 2016 to 8.2 percent in 2018) and among men ages 70 to 74 (from 3.2 percent to 6 percent). There was less change in the use among women. [Read more at NBC News]