Since 2020, The United States has spent $4 trillion a year on health care, of which almost $580 billion was spent on pharmaceuticals alone in 2021.
It’s why I decided to venture around the world again for our latest documentary, “ Weed 7: A Senior Moment.” If it is true that cannabis could help decrease the number of medications seniors are taking, that could have tremendous implications. And they regularly prefer it over the other medications they were often prescribed, such as sleeping pills, antidepressants and even opioids. More often than not, according to recent studies, seniors use cannabis daily to help address some of the nuisances of aging: poor sleep, aches and pains, mood. People who grew up during the war on drugs and were in the formative years of their life when they experienced the impact of “Reefer Madness” are now willing to try cannabis, often for the first time. Right now, we are witnessing a sort of “senior moment.” Honestly, it blows my mind. Most remarkable to me is the demographic switch. Seniors - people over the age of 65 - are now the fastest growing group of cannabis users in the United States. In some states, it is still a crime to carry cannabis as a medicine, even if it quells the seizures of a small child. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images) Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Across Missouri, cannabis sales in February - when recreational use was legalized - totaled $103 million, as compared with $37.2 million the month before, according to the state's health department. The new regulation, approved by voters in a referendum in November, has sparked an economic boom for the "Show Me" state, fueled by thousands of pot smokers from the eight states on its edges, most of which have not legalized the drug. Missouri, a largely conservative Midwestern state, is the latest to legalize the recreational use of cannabis. Up until 1996, there wasn’t a single state that had legalized cannabis for any purpose, but now 38 states and the District of Columbia have some form of cannabis legally available, while it remains a Schedule I substance federally: “drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.“Ī view of cannabis plants at the Illicit Gardens production facility in Independence, Missouri, on March 18, 2023.
Over the past few decades, we have experienced one of the most significant and uneven legal evolutions ever seen in the United States. While it is not something that will work for everyone, that should not mean it isn’t available to anyone. Yes, there are real risks, as with most things. I came to the realization that in some cases, not only did cannabis provide relief, it was the only thing that did so. I traveled the world, visited tiny labs and, most important, spent time with patients - even young children - who changed my mind. I had even written a story for Time magazine a few years earlier to make the case that the evidence simply wasn’t there.īut, as so often happens when we start to dig into things, a different picture started to emerge. Prior to filming our first documentary on cannabis a decade ago, I was highly skeptical about its use as a medicine.
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