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<div class="">March 22, 2013</div>
<h1>Shuffleboard? Oh, Maybe Let’s Get High Instead</h1>
<h6 class="">By
<span><span>ALYSON KRUEGER</span></span></h6>
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<p>
For Cher Neufer, a 65-year-old retired teacher, socializing with friends
(all in their 60s) means using marijuana. Once a week they get together
to play Texas Hold ’Em poker “and pass around a doobie,” Ms. Neufer
said. </p>
<p>
When company stops by her home in Akron, Ohio, she offers a joint, and
when it’s someone’s birthday, a bong is prepared. She even hosts summer
campfires where the older folk listen to the Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin
and the Beatles; eat grilled steaks and hot dogs; and get high (not
necessarily in that order). </p>
<p>
“It’s nice,” Ms. Neufer said. “It’s just a social thing. It’s like when
people get together, and they crack open their beers.” </p>
<p>
Statistics suggest that more members of the older generations, like Ms.
Neufer, are using marijuana. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health
reported in 2011 that 6.3 percent of adults between the ages of 50 and
59 used the drug. That number has risen from 2.7 percent in 2002.
</p>
<p>
And anecdotal evidence points to much of this use being sociable rather than medical. </p>
<p>
When 70-year-old Robert Platshorn, a marijuana activist who was jailed
for three decades after dealing the drug, moved into a gated community
in West Palm Beach, Fla., three years ago, he said he “met people in my
development who were looking strange at me.” Now, he said, couples
invite him to their condominiums to get high together (Mr. Platshorn
insisted he never accepts these offers). </p>
<p>
Moms for Marijuana International, a pro-marijuana group that brings
people together to socialize and learn about the positive aspects of the
plant, has received so many queries from older people over the past
year that it is creating chapters called Grannies for Grass in Illinois,
Ohio and Missouri. </p>
<p>
“There are groups out there that have trivia night and they have
get-togethers,” said Vickie Hoffman, 46, a grandmother of three and a
former bartender who is organizing the Missouri chapter. “It is fun, and
it’s a group of great people.” </p>
<p>
Mason Tvert, the communication director of the Marijuana Policy Project,
a group that works to change marijuana laws, said he started consuming
marijuana about two years ago with his grandparents, Helen and Leo
Shuller, who are 82 and 88. Now, when they get together, they “have a
little bit off the vaporizer,” he said, either before or after dinner,
and enjoy the effects. </p>
<p>
The dinners aren’t “centered around using marijuana, like a little
invitation with a leaf on it,” Mr. Tvert hastened to point out. “There
just happens to be marijuana available.” </p>
<p>
It makes sense that the baby boom generation and people a little younger
might be more casual and open about marijuana use; after all, they grew
up in the ’60s and ’70s, when getting high was the norm. According to
Richard J. Bonnie, the author of “Marijuana Conviction: A History of
Marijuana Prohibition in the United States,” in 1971 a national
commission on marijuana drug use even recommended decriminalizing the
drug, something that, for many people, was “recognized as a perfectly
sensible proposal,” he said. </p>
<p>
Some pot smokers of decades ago simply never stopped indulging with
their friends. Indeed, Ms. Neufer, a self-proclaimed hippie (“I will be
forever in my heart, and in my mind,” she said), started smoking at 21
and has been growing pot in her backyard and organizing drug-fueled
sing-a-longs ever since. </p>
<p>
She pointed out that those who have moved on from corporate work might
feel more comfortable revealing and sharing their marijuana use. </p>
<p>
“Most of us are either retiring or are retired,” Ms. Neufer said. “You
don’t have to worry about your job knowing, so it’s a little easier for
us. I don’t care if you use my name, I don’t care if they know!” </p>
<p>
Though, she added, “I know a lot of professional people who still have
high-level jobs are still very nervous about it.” (In Ohio, possessing
or using small amounts of marijuana is a minor misdemeanor.) </p>
<p>
It also helps, perhaps, that most are empty nesters, no longer concerned
with setting a good example for their children or having drugs within
reach of minors. Many grandparents “are at a stage in their life where
it doesn’t make a difference,” said Diane-Marie Williams, executive
director of administration of Moms for Marijuana International and a
grandmother herself. “They’ve raised their families, they’ve done their
careers, and at this point I think they are saying, ‘O.K., I’m not
jeopardizing my family.’ ” </p>
<p>
Marijuana’s legal strides have also made it a lot easier for people to publicize or at least not hide their drug use. </p>
<p>
“It did so much good having Washington and Colorado legalize, having 18
states that have medical, and 14 more states that have decriminalized,”
Mr. Platshorn said. “That helps people come out of the closet.” </p>
<p>
Mr. and Ms. Shuller, for example, made it clear that they use marijuana
only with their family when they are in states where it is
decriminalized or legal for medical reasons. </p>
<p>
“That’s maybe something they would find troubling,” Mr. Tvert said about his grandparents. “To break the law.” </p>
<p>
And the drug’s therapeutic effects, which have been more accepted by the
medical world in recent years, offer further incentive. </p>
<p>
Ms. Hoffman, who lives in Grubville, Mo. (population about 100), has <a href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/crohns-disease/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="In-depth reference and news articles about Crohn's disease." class="">Crohn’s disease</a> and other medical problems. She said she barely has the energy to socialize without the drug. </p>
<p>
“Me getting around is a little bit rough,” she said, but after using
marijuana, she feels healthier. “I can do more things. We play croquet.
We do things out in the yard, and if I don’t have it I can barely walk
across the floor. It’s a big pick-me-up.” </p>
<p>
Ms. Shuller, who has <a href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/arthritis/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="In-depth reference and news articles about Arthritis and Rheumatism." class="">arthritis</a>
in almost every part of her body, said she loves how pot relieves her
pain without leaving her with the negative side effects of painkillers
or alcohol. </p>
<p>
“I had never tried it before,” she said of her first time consuming the
drug two years ago, “and it didn’t bother me at all. It felt good, and
it’s certainly better than alcohol, which is draggy and sometimes leaves
you sick.” </p>
<p>
So many older people value how the drug makes them feel, Ms. Williams
said, that they even cook with the cannabis, putting it on salads or in
the tea they drink before they go to bed. They also exchange recipes
online through the Moms for Marijuana International Web site. </p>
<p>
Ms. Hoffman said, “All my friends are as educated on the subject as I
am, and if they aren’t, I keep trying to make them.” </p>
<p>
Ms. Neufer added: “It’s like as you get older, it’s not something you do
all the time, but you still do it. It’s still something you like. It
still makes you feel good.”<br></p></div><div>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br><br><img src="http://users.moscow.com/waf/WP%20Fox%2001.jpg"><br>
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