Seniors frequently overdose on marijuana use.
In Canada, pot was made legal for grown-ups back in October 2018. This has piqued the interest of workers in emergency rooms, particularly for one group of people.
The legalization of cannabis in Canada has resulted in a threefold increase in cases of poisonings requiring treatment in individuals aged 65 or older. This was uncovered by a research team led by Nathan Stall, who works at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. According to the study published in the medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine, this age group tended to favour eating cannabis and quite often underestimated the effects of the THC drug.
The researchers studied data from the emergency room of the Ontario Health Ministry for eight years. They categorized the data of older adults who required emergency room treatment due to cannabis poisoning into 3 distinct research periods. The first period ranged from before legalization in January 2015 to September 2018. The second period lasted from October 2018 to December 2019, and only allowed the sale of dried cannabis flowers. The third period, where the sale of edible cannabis products was also allowed, commenced in January 2020 and ended in December 2022.
The findings revealed a total of 2322 individuals aged 67 to 73 reported to an emergency room in Ontario due to cannabis poisoning during the research period. Of these, 1041 were female and 1281 male. Additionally, 385 had alcohol poisoning along with cannabis intoxication, 985 were dealing with cancer, and 151 with dementia.
If there were 100,000 person-years in Ontario prior to the legalization of edible cannabis, and there were 5.8 cannabis intoxication cases per 100,000 person-years in people aged 65 or older, after legalizing edible cannabis the incidence increased to 15.4 cases per 100,000 person-years. The start of the sale of edible cannabis products also saw an increase in emergency room visits, rising to 21.1 per 100,000 person-years.
It's likely that senior citizens and seniors have been using the drug for self-medication. The researchers provided possible reasons for this, including accidental consumption, easy access, no age-specific dosing instructions, and the lack of safe and effective treatment options for chronic pain, sleeping disorders, and psychological signs of dementia. Seniors are at a greater risk for cannabis side effects due to age-related physiological changes, multiple medicines, drug interactions, and various diseases.
The research team also speculated that the true frequency of cannabis poisoning in this age group could even be greater. They reasoned that some older adults might have sought treatment elsewhere or not at all, considering the legalization of edible cannabis coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the study's data overlaps with data from the USA, the researchers suggest implementing more protection for this age group. Suggested measures involve reducing unintentional ingestion and establishing age-specific dosing instructions.
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