Medical pot use increasing in the elderly

//Medical pot use increasing in the elderly

Ida Ruggiero, an opinionated great-grandma, remembered the deep embarrassment that crept over her when she told each of her five adult children her news.

Ruggiero, 81, was using weed, twice a day. With her doctor’s permission, of course.

Yes, the same substance that she had sternly warned them not to try when they were teens growing up in a middle-class home in South Jersey in the ‘60s.

“I used to threaten that I would beat them,” Ruggiero, a former school board member, said a few hours after she had popped a piece of a cannabis lozenge. None of her now-adult children objected to her decision to use it, she said.

Ruggiero is among a small but growing group of people in their 80s and 90s who have decided to experiment with marijuana, still an illegal substance under federal law. A majority of states have legalized it to treat a wide array of ailments and its popularity is rising.

 

Article by Jan Helfer, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Click here to read the full article.

2018-11-02T15:08:04-04:00

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