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Brennan found that some of these seniors had used marijuana on the recommendation of a doctor.
About 15% of users aged 50 to 64 and 23% of those 65 and older said that a doctor had recommended them.
But there is not much scientific evidence that marijuana has a medicinal effect, said Brennan. Without further research to establish its effectiveness, doctors should not prescribe medication.
"To tell a patient to use cannabis seems to me to ignore all the scientific steps we usually take to start prescribing a new therapeutic agent," Brennan said.
The survey responses also link the use of the pot to other unhealthy substances. Older people who use marijuana were more likely to report alcoholism, nicotine addiction, cocaine use, and misuse of prescription pain medications.
Importantly, older people digging their old bongs might react differently to the pot of what they remember in their youth, said Palamar.
Marijuana today is much more powerful and age can change the way your body responds to a drug, he explained.
"They may have been able to handle it at that time, but that does not mean that they can handle it now," Palamar said. "It may not affect you the same way when you're 60, if you have not used it for decades."
Seniors also take more prescription medications, increasing the risk of an undesirable drug interaction involving their pot, Palamar and Brennan said.
"If you're older and taking prescription medications, you need to know how marijuana can react with these medications – you do not want bad reactions," Palamar said.
Linda Richter, director of policy analysis and research at the Center on Addiction in New York, agreed that the pot may present unique hazards to older users. She was not part of the research.
"The marijuana industry has promoted the drug as being harmless and even beneficial for an ever-growing list of common diseases in aging adults," she said.
"[They] may not realize that their vulnerability to the harmful physiological and cognitive effects of alcohol and drugs such as marijuana intensifies with age, especially in terms of cardiovascular, respiratory effects , balance, reaction time and memory that also consume alcohol or use prescription drugs, "Richter said.
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