Seniors Drive Medical Cannabis Boom; Doctors Lag Behind
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- Peter Grinspoon recounts a New Year's Eve 2016 incident in Massachusetts where a 70-ish woman collapsed after overconsuming cannabis at a party, because the product was roughly 10 times stronger than what she had used decades earlier.
- At a New York state dispensary, 25.8% of medical cannabis patients are ages 65 or older and 34.5% are ages 50-64, making seniors the fastest-growing user demographic for medical cannabis.
- War-on-drugs smuggling economics drove THC potency upward while medicinal components like CBD were bred down, leaving today's cannabis roughly 10 times stronger than it was 50 years ago, Grinspoon writes.
- The cannabis industry has split into roughly 10,000 small ethical businesses and large multistate operators that Grinspoon compares to alcohol and tobacco companies for pushing high-THC products and advertising that may reach adolescents.
- Grinspoon has treated thousands of medical cannabis patients over 25 years with few ill effects using a "start low and go slow" dosing approach, and argues doctors and nurses need urgent education to guide patients.
- Grinspoon calls for federal legalization — which he says would improve product quality and labeling — and urges the industry to breed down THC while breeding up medicinal cannabinoids.
Why it matters: With 60% of medical cannabis patients at one New York dispensary aged 50 or older and product potency roughly 10 times higher than decades ago, the gap between patient adoption and physician training is now a clinical safety issue that federal legalization and physician education could help close.
