Panel will discuss seniors and marijuana
Health officials should expect an increase in the number of seniors using cannabis as the date for the legalization of recreational marijuana rolls around.
More seniors will become interested in cannabis as stigma around the drug fades and more becomes known about its medicinal uses, trends show, though facilities still have some apprehension about how to accommodate its use.
“Seniors, as with everybody, will be able to go and buy it and use it,” said Isobel Mackenzie, B.C.’s seniors advocate. “I think their issues, to a large extent, are the same as everybody else.
“There might be a little bit of caution around more frail, elderly seniors,” said Mackenzie, in terms of potentially significant mood-altering effects that wouldn’t be as apparent in younger users.
“I am pretty certain a care home is not going to be allowed to refuse the right to access a legally available substance,” Mackenzie said, especially in provincially subsidized beds.
She pointed out that 80 per cent of residential care beds in the province are subsidized.
Residents will have to abide by existing smoking restrictions, Mackenzie said, but seniors would likely be using other methods of consuming cannabis anyway.
The prospect of legalization has prompted a “huge discussion” among care facilities, said Al Jina, CEO of Park Place Seniors Living and former director on the board of the B.C. Care Providers Association.
“Our biggest concerns for seniors (are around) how are they going to use it?” Jina said. “How is it going to be dispensed? How is it going to be stored and how are we going to train our nurses to administer it medically?
“There has to be a whole bunch of protocols in place to manage that.”
The B.C. Care Providers Association is convening a panel discussion on the topic Oct. 2, which will include Jina, former B.C. health minister Terry Lake and Terry Roycroft, president of the Medicinal Cannabis Resource Centre.
Seniors over 65 aren’t a big cannabis user group, according to Statistics Canada surveys, accounting for just 1.6 per cent of users in a 2015 survey, though the document on the federal agency’s website put a note of caution regarding the reliability of that number.
Cannabis users aged 45 to 64, however, increased to seven per cent in 2015 compared with 6.1 per cent in 2013, according to Statistics Canada.
While more definite estimates are not available for Canada, the trend of increasing use aligns somewhat with the U.S. experience, where more and more states are legalizing cannabis recreationally
Seniors, as with everybody, will be able to go and buy it and use it. Their issues, to a large extent, are the same as everybody else.
or, in more cases, for medical use.
Data collected by the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health in 2015 and 2016 found that about three per cent of people over 65 and nine per cent of those ages 50 to 64 had used cannabis during that period.
That was an increase from just 1.4 per cent for those over 65 and seven per cent of those between 50 and 64 from the same survey conducted in 2013.
While there is still more of a stigma around cannabis for older seniors, Roycroft said, that is being worn down as more cannabis companies make mainstream news as potentially good investments or by garnering attention from bigger companies like Coca-Cola.
However, Roycroft thinks that while recreational use opens up possibilities for older users, their interest will still be on the medicinal side with consumption guided by physicians, considering other medications they might be on.
Roycroft said cannabis is particularly effective in pain control, anxiety and as a sleep aid, and CBD extracted from the drug is an antiinflammatory.
Mackenzie added that it was important for older seniors to inform doctors and nurses about their cannabis use so side-effects from use aren’t confused with symptoms of something else.
“You could be presenting symptoms that, because of your age, could be inferred as cognitive impairment when you’re not cognitively impaired, you’re just stoned,” Mackenzie said.