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.