smoking

cannabis all the time and like just not doing anything with his or her life.

And, you know, being addicted to cannabis can affect your social relationships, your education, your progress in life, and it really, really can screw people up.

That said, to put it in context, nobody dies from cannabis addiction like you do from opiates, alcohol so um you know if you're not gonna die there's an opportunity eventually to treat them so i think they have a much better prognosis but it's simply not true that cannabis isn't addictive i treat cannabis addiction all the time i treat addiction i coach and consult on addiction on my website people sign up and a lot of what i do is cannabis addiction in terms of the other harms There are categories of people that we say do not use cannabis.

We don't want teenagers using cannabis because teenagers tend to get addicted more than adults to everything and because it could affect potentially their brain development.

So teenagers, we say just say wait.

Medical patients, 18 in Massachusetts.

And so what would you – what's your – I'm curious your position on legalization versus decriminalization.

So let's start this off with how do you find clean product that's not full of the herbicide, pesticide, rodent sides and all that so you can actually safely start using this stuff?

No, absolutely.

First of all, I agree completely the products are different.

They're much stronger than they used to be, which is part of why I wrote this book.

People can take too much and they can have a very bad experience.

You have to start at the right level of cannabis, and it's a little bit harder to do that when it's much, much stronger than it used to be.

So people do have to be aware of the product.

So next big question with that, there is this – dual market that's out there that obviously is very very similar we have cbd oil which has a ton of research around it and we have the thc which was the thing that drew everybody to marijuana way back in his day in the first place what's really the difference in the effect of those two

What are the two or three cannabis claims you think are dangerously overstated on each side?

Well, on the pro side, people were saying cannabis cures COVID.

It's like cannabis doesn't cure COVID.

End of story.

In fact, smoking cannabis when you might have COVID can actually irritate your lungs and potentially predispose you to pneumonia.

Now, component number two, components of cannabis in the lab can be detrimental to cancer cells.

That is going to be really interesting as we study it over the decades.

so peter with all this knowledge peter how should physicians talk uh honestly about cannabis to their patients when the evidence is often uneven, stronger for some conditions, over-marketed for others? How should they talk without scaring patients away or becoming salespeople?

Dr. Grinspoon, tell us why did you decide to write a book specifically for aging cannabis consumers?

Well, I've been taking care of patients with cannabis for a very long time, probably 25 years.

And What I've been noticing and what I've been reading about as well is that the demographic of patients that are embracing medical cannabis most rapidly by far is our seniors.

And it's really helping them with a lot of diseases that come along with aging.

We'll talk about sleep, anxiety, arthritis, stuff like that, pain.

But the problem is there's really no good practical information for them.

There's no good resources.

You

So what do you think doctors should know who maybe still feel this stigma that's kind of lingering there when it comes to cannabis?

Well, this stigma is unfortunate.

It makes it so people don't avail themselves of medical marijuana who could really, really benefit from it.

And a lot of people would switch from alcohol to cannabis if it weren't.

In the places where it's legal, if there weren't this stigma, I mean, again, alcohol was associated with 178,000 deaths in 2024, cannabis with none.

It's insane that cannabis is so much more stigmatized than alcohol because by every metric, cannabis is a safer medication.

Again, that's not to say cannabis doesn't have its harms, which we can discuss, but There's been this war on drugs for the last seven years where the U.S. government just promoted lie after lie after lie about cannabis.

So for those older adults who have heard some of this stuff so far and they understand the risks versus the benefits and they maybe want to try it to alleviate some of their health concerns, how can they do this without slowing them down?

So you saw both sides of the situation, both from the scientific point and from the user point.

Well, first of all, I can get less people hooked on opiates.

Primary care doctor, person comes in with chronic pain.

I can give them oxycodone or I can give them cannabis.

Cannabis can be addictive, but way less addictive than the opiates and the addiction isn't life-threatening.

So number one, the fewer opiates we use in medical practice, the fewer patients get addicted.

Number two, opiates and cannabis work really well together.

And I just think that there is a lot to be said about the prescription pill crisis that we have in this nation and how cannabis is an exit drug, not a gateway drug, as prohibitionists continue to advocate.

So tell me how with an aging population marijuana can be integrated in a safe way to address some of these things.

Well, as we get older, our aches and pains increase.

Our joints hurt, our knees, our backs, our hips wear out.

You know, we weren't really built to live to 70, 80, 90.

We used to, something used to hit us over the head or, you know, eat us much younger.

Now, with vaccines, people are living twice as long, and people have pain.

You know, something like 60 million Americans have chronic pain, mostly people older than 65.

Like, what is responsible?

Am I wrong?

Well, no, the stats- the study you...

Uh, the hard part is we don't really know how dangerous it is with pregnant women.

A lot of pregnant women use cannabis because they think it's safe and natural and they think it's harmless.

And it works really well for morning sickness.

I never recommend to pregnant women that you use cannabis, 'cause we don't know how safe or dangerous it is.

Most likely, the smoking of cannabis is what makes it dangerous, because when you smoke cannabis, just like when you smoke tobacco, you get dangerous combustion products.

Last word.

Am I wrong?

Well, no, the stats- the study you...

Eh, the hard part is we don't really know how dangerous it is with pregnant women.

A lot of pregnant women use cannabis because they think it's safe and natural and they think it's harmless, and it works really well for morning sickness.

I never recommend to pregnant women that you use cannabis because we don't know how safe or dangerous it is.

Most likely, the smoking of cannabis is what makes it dangerous.

Because when you smoke cannabis, just like when you smoke tobacco, you get dangerous combustion products, but I do, for the sake of fair- fairness, need to mention that there are just as many studies that don't show any problems, uh, with- with, uh, fetuses or children if the parents use marijuana.

Last word.

Am I wrong?

Well, no.

The stats, the study you... th- the hard part is we don't really know how dangerous it is with pregnant women.

A lot of pregnant women use cannabis because they think it's safe and natural and they think it's harmless.

And it works really well for morning sickness.

I never recommend to pregnant women that you use cannabis because we don't know how safe or dangerous it is.

Most likely the smoking of cannabis is what makes it dangerous because when you smoke cannabis, just like when you smoke tobacco, you get dangerous combustion products.

Last word.