Why Growing Numbers of Baby Boomers and the Elderly Are Smoking Pot

Conventional wisdom dictates that as younger generations slowly replace the old, conservative social traditions are jettisoned.

This may be true for issues such as gay marriage, where there are clear divisions among younger and older voters, but when it comes to marijuana reform, the evidence indicates that simplistic divisions of opinion along age lines don't apply for pot.

Earlier this week, an AP wire article picked up a lot of buzz in the news-cycle, with a title and premise meant to shock the mainstream: "Marijuana Use by Seniors Goes up as Boomers Age."

The AP article was pegged to a December report released by the Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). It revealed that the number of Americans over 50 who reported consuming cannabis in the year prior to the study had gone up from 1.9 percent to 2.9 percent in the period from 2002 to 2008.

This is supported by earlier polling results. In February 2009, a Zogby poll found that voters aged 50 to 64 were almost equally divided in their support for marijuana legalization at 48 percent. In that same poll, young voters aged 18 to 29 were the cohort who most enthusiastically supported legalization, at 55 percent. But overall support among all ages came in at 44 percent.

So who brought the average down? Don't lay the blame on the elderly. In fact, as early as 2004, an AARP poll found that 72 percent of its members (all 50-plus, with the lion's share over 65) supported marijuana for medical purposes, indicating their understanding of the benefits of legal cannabis availability.

Some expert observers in the marijuana reform movement believe the bulk of marijuana detractors are made up of 30- and 40-somethings -- adults of parenting age. And as more of the 65-and-over crowd is populated by baby boomers, it appears that in the not-too-distant future every age demographic including the elderly will approve of marijuana reform more than Americans in their 30s and 40s.

"These are people who have had children, and whether they used marijuana in the past or not, they've become very concerned that young children will have access to it," says Paul Armentano, deputy national director of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). "They've been swayed by prohibition and are leery of the option to end it, even though controlling and regulating marijuana would provide less access to children."

In the breakdown of the 2009 Zogby poll, which NORML allowed AlterNet to review, 38.7 percent of respondents 65 and older approved of taxing and regulating marijuana for adults. A low number, but compare it to the group aged 30 to 49, who approved it at 38.2 percent. Nearly the same, but still lower. And it ought to be noted that in an earlier Zogby poll, commissioned by NORML in 2006, 30- to 49-year-olds stood out even more starkly, opposing marijuana legalization at 58 percent, while the 65-plus crowd opposed it at 52 percent; approximately two-thirds of the young adult and boomer cohorts approved.

And just as children are the reason many younger parents are against marijuana reform, offspring (or the lack of them) may also be behind why greater numbers of aging boomers are embracing marijuana -- most or all of their kids have left the nest.

This makes sense to George Rohrbacher, a 61-year-old cattle rancher in Eastern Washington state who smokes weed every day. When his kids -- now 25 to 35 -- were growing up, marijuana was something he had to keep a secret.

"Children under 18 don't need to be high on anything other than life," Rohrbacher says. His wife Ann espouses the same belief and quit marijuana just before 1976, when they had their first child. She later became a school superintendent.