Monday, August 17, 2009

Even Grandma Wants To Use Medical Marijuana



Weed making inroads among retirees

Tom BarlowTom Barlow

Aug 15th 2009 at 3:00PM

Although California has a huge population of residents carrying
prescriptions for medical marijuana, the social stigma attached to the
drug has led the elderly to be very hesitant about adopting it as a
palliative for age-related problems such as loss of appetite, nausea and
chronic pain.

Now a luxury retirement community in Orange County, Laguna Woods
Village, whose residents have discovered pot's benefits, has made weed
easier to obtain by establishing its own pot collective.

The community set up its collective because, although there are
thousands of clinics in the state selling marijuana, none were
convenient to the residents, some of whom have very limited mobility.

For the greatest generation, taught to believe that marijuana was as
addictive and deadly as drugs such as heroin, the reality has come as a
pleasant surprise to many. NPR reports on the epiphany of a 73-year-old
Leisure World resident and synchronized swimmer who found it effective
in countering her nausea.

The fact that the retirees are receiving recommendations to try pot for
their ills from their peers leads me to believe that the use of it on
the West Coast has reached a critical mass. We could well see demand for
legalization, at least for medical reasons, swell among the retiree
community across the country.

As a boomer, I expect that when our generation retires, many may choose
to pull out the E-Z wides, fire up a blunt, order a pizza, and crank up
Dark Side of the Moon once again, and not just for medical reasons.

A national columnist (name escapes me) recently wrote a tongue-in-cheek
column in which he offered to voluntarily give up his driver's license
on his 80th birthday in return for the right to all the drugs he wants.

Medical or recreational, is there a good reason why those who have
worked a lifetime should be denied the opportunity to spend their golden
years in a haze if they so choose?

Reference - NPR story on seniors in Laguna Woods, Ca using medical
marijuana -
http://www.npr. org/templates/ story/story. php?storyId= 111783991

http://www.walletpo p.com/blog/ 2009/08/15/ weed-making- inroads-among- retir\
ees/

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