United States: While it may feel that youthful people are the primary demographic serving from legal cannabis use, recent data indicates that aged folks in Canada endured the biggest shaft in operation following legalization, occasionally to the point of hospitalization.
Increased Cannabis Use Among Seniors
According to a exploration letter published on Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, the rate of exigency department visits for cannabis poisoning among aged grown-ups passed during the period of legalization of dried cannabis flower and edibles in Canada, which ran from October 2018 through December 2022, and was significantly advanced than the pre-legalization period.
Edibles, such as drinks, sweets, and baked goods, are becoming more and more popular, according to lead research author Dr. Nathan Stall, a clinical scientist and geriatrician at Sinai Health in Ontario. Though nothing is known about the health consequences of legalizing edible cannabis on older adults, who are the age group with the biggest growth in cannabis use overall a year after dry cannabis flower, some older adults may not be aware of the potency of today’s strain.
“There’s a bias against older people in medicine and, to be honest, in society that many of them believe they don’t use medicines. And that’s untrue, according to Stall. “We discovered that after edible cannabis became legal for retail sale in January 2020, there were the biggest increases in emergency department visits for cannabis poisoning among seniors.”
Health Risks of Cannabis Legalization
The rates of emergency room visits for cannabis poisoning among older adults during the pre-legalization period, which ran from January 2015 to September 2018, and the two legalization periods, which allowed the sale of dried cannabis flower only from October 2018 through December 2019, and January 2020 through December 2022, when cannabis edibles were legal, were examined by the authors using administrative data from the Ontario Ministry of Health.
According to Stall, symptoms of cannabis poisoning include confusion, nausea, vomiting, fast heartbeat, anxiety, panic attacks, psychosis, including hallucinations, and rapid breathing.
Statistics and Analysis
Over the course of the eight-year study period, 2,322 older adults—averaging age of 69—visited emergency rooms due to cannabis poisoning. Roughly 17 of those grown-ups also suffered from madness, roughly 38 from cancer, and roughly 17 from alcohol intoxication. In legalization periodNo. 1, the rate of exigency room visits for cannabis poisoning was doubly as high as it was before legalization. The rate tripled from the pre-legalization period to the second legalization period.
Expert Commentary
Drs. Lona Mody and Sharon K. Inouye, who were not involved in the research, commented on the findings, saying that “this study provides a cautionary tale of legalizing substances without adequate research, education, and counseling of users regarding adverse effects and safe usage, particularly in older adults.”
At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mody holds the Amanda Sanford Hickey Professor of Internal Medicine title. Inouye is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Aging Brain Center at the Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research in Boston.